LONDON, 18 December, 2020, (TON):  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has underlined the post-Brexit trade negotiations between Britain and the European Union (EU) were now "in a serious situation," a Downing Street spokesperson said.

"The Prime Minister underlined that the negotiations were now in a serious situation. Time was very short and it now looked very likely that an agreement would not be reached unless the EU position changed substantially," said the spokesperson in a statement issued after a phone call between Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday.

Britain was "making every effort to accommodate reasonable EU requests on the level playing field, but even though the gap had narrowed some fundamental areas remained difficult," said the statement.

"On fisheries he (Johnson) stressed that the UK could not accept a situation where it was the only sovereign country in the world not to be able to control access to its own waters for an extended period and to be faced with fisheries quotas which hugely disadvantaged its own industry," said the statement.

"The EU's position in this area was simply not reasonable and if there was to be an agreement it needed to shift significantly," it added.

The prime minister repeated that little time was left and "if no agreement could be reached, the UK and the EU would part as friends, with the UK trading with the EU on Australian-style terms," said the statement. Australia trades with the EU largely on the World Trade Organization (WTO) terms.

"The leaders agreed to remain in close contact, said the statement.

For her part, von der Leyen said on Twitter that the EU "welcomed substantial progress on many issues. However, big differences remain to be bridged, in particular on fisheries. Bridging them will be very challenging."

"Negotiations will continue tomorrow," she said.

Earlier, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said on Thursday that the British government "will be doing everything" to secure a good post-Brexit trade deal with the EU.

However, Gove reaffirmed that Britain would walk away if a trade deal was not "in the best interests of our country".

The British and EU leaders have previously said significant differences remained between the two sides on three critical issues: level playing field, governance and fisheries.

Both sides have called on the other to shift position to try to safeguard almost a trillion dollar worth of trade from tariffs and quotas when a so-called transition period ends on Dec. 31.

Since Britain left the EU in January, the talks have been largely hamstrung over two issues - the bloc’s fishing rights in British waters and on creating a so-called level playing field providing fair competition rules for both sides.

EU powers are concerned Britain wants the best of both worlds - preferential access to lucrative EU markets, with the advantage of setting its own rules.