Downing Street fears that Michel Barnier has lost his grip on the fishing negotiations, throwing doubt over Boris Johnson’s hopes of a summer of swift and definitive progress towards a trade and security deal with the EU. The bloc’s chief negotiator had been expected to present a compromise proposal on access to British waters during the talks last week but was blocked at the last minute by member states with large fishing communities. British sources said an unexpected decision by fisheries ministers at a meeting with Barnier to reject a move away from their hardline position had “skewed things late in the process”, preventing a middle ground being found. Despite four rounds of talks on fisheries by videoconference call last week, a time commitment unmatched for any other issue, both sides confirmed on Friday that there had been no progress towards a deal. Barnier said “the EU wants the status quo, the UK wants to change everything”, but called for discussions “somewhere between”. As a result of the surprise logjam, recent discussions between the sides on moving the negotiations into a new intensive phase of face-to-face talks between Barnier and his counterpart, David Frost, in July have become more difficult. Downing Street wants to swiftly enter a “tunnel phase” over the summer during which member states would entrust Barnier to thrash out a trade and security deal without constant intervention by the EU capitals. France, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and Sweden have not yet offered their negotiator any flexibility on the key issue of fishing rights despite Barnier’s public calls for both sides to move from their “maximalist” positions. The EU now expects the talks to drag into October, a suggestion that senior UK sources insist is unacceptable given the need for businesses on both sides to prepare for the new trading environment that will come from any deal. Downing Street hopes Barnier will try again to move the EU capitals towards compromise. “We are now at an important moment for these talks,” a government spokesman said. “If we are to make progress, it is clear that we must intensify and accelerate our work. Any such deal must of course accommodate the reality of the UK’s well-established position on the so-called level playing field, on fisheries, and the other difficult issues.” When it comes to fishing rights, the EU wants to emulate the strictures of the common fisheries policy (CFP) from the end of 2020 when the UK leaves the transition period during which it has remained in the bloc’s single market and customs union. Under the CFP, the total allowable catch figures for different species of fish are negotiated annually by fisheries ministers. The respective share that each member state’s fleet then takes is based on catches recorded in the 1970s. British fishing communities have long claimed that the policy has left them with far too few fish to catch with notable inequities including that French fishermen have 84% of the cod quota in the English Channel. The UK is insisting it will be an independent coastal state from the end of 2020 and that there needs to be a new relationship with the EU in this area, similar to that enjoyed by Norway. The British negotiating side wants fishing rights to depend on where the fish live – a model known as zonal attachment. Frost has informed Barnier, however, that other factors such as the effect on coastal communities and longstanding rights could be a factor in annual negotiations to ensure that European fishing communities are not left bereft. Barnier had been expected to provide some data on how such external factors would affect the rights to catches but sources said that failed to materialise in the last week. “Until they give us some more, there is no way of using that to derive hard information about the numbers,” one UK source said. “That appears to be the difficulty. If they could do it we would happily talk to them about it and see what could be done.”