⁍ The United Kingdom left the European Union in January.

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⁍ Both sides are now meeting daily to try to find common ground.

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⁍ At stake is the smooth flow of cross-border trade.

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– With less than two months to go until Britain is due to leave the European Union, the two sides are back at the negotiating table in an attempt to hammer out a Brexit deal. Reuters reports that chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier is in London on Monday for yet another round of talks, and a rep for British Prime Minister Theresa May said there is “much work to be done” before a withdrawal agreement can be reached. “There are significant gaps that remain between our positions in the most difficult areas and time is very short,” the rep said. Britain is due to leave the EU on Jan. 1, and the EU wants a transition period until that date to hammer out a trade deal that will ensure the smooth flow of trade between the UK, which is in the EU’s customs union, and the EU, which is in the UK’s. On Sunday, Ireland’s deputy prime minister said a deal to avoid tariffs and quotas was likely. After some progress on competition guarantees including state aid rules, the hardest issue remains fishing—Johnson has insisted on taking back control over Britain’s waters while the EU wants access. Although Britain insists it can prosper without a deal, British companies are facing a wall of bureaucracy that threatens chaos at the border if they want to sell into the world’s biggest trading bloc when Brexit begins on Jan. 1.