Crunch time for Brexit as EU gives Britain 48 hours to break deadlock

Brexit negotiations between the United Kingdom with the European Union will continue through the weekend, the country’s chief law officer said on Thursday, as London scrambled to secure changes to the divorce deal before a vote in Parliament next week.

With Britain’s scheduled departure from the bloc a little more than three weeks away, the EU said “difficult” talks have failed to produce a breakthrough because British proposals are regarded as unrealistic.

“We are waiting for a proposal from the British government,” French Europe Minister Nathalie Loiseau told BBC radio. “We have heard what you don’t want; we are willing to know what you want.”

Loiseau met UK Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay on Thursday and urged Britain to clear the fog of uncertainty. “We clearly don’t want to lecture but the clock is really ticking and I do think it would have been better for people and businesses to live in more certainty than they are today,” she said.

UK Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, however, insisted that “focused, detailed and careful discussions” would resume “shortly”.

“We are discussing text with the European Union,” he said. “I am surprised to hear the comments that have emerged over the last 48 hours the proposals are not clear. They are as clear as day and we are continuing to discuss them.”

Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, but its Parliament resoundingly rejected in January the divorce deal that lays out the terms of an orderly departure and a transition period for businesses to adjust to new trade rules.

British lawmakers are due to vote again on Tuesday on the deal, including any changes the government manages to secure. If it is rejected again, MPs will vote on whether to leave the EU without an agreement — an idea likely to be rejected — or to ask the EU to delay Brexit.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told BBC radio on Friday that history would view both the UK and the EU badly if they mismanage Brexit.

Hunt also said some progress has been made in the last few days. “There’s a bit more to make. It’s entirely possible to get there.”

British concerns about the divorce deal center on a provision designed to keep an open border between the UK’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. The mechanism, known as the backstop, is a safeguard that would keep the UK in a customs union with the other 27 EU countries in order to remove the need for checks until a permanent new trading relationship is in place.

Brexit-supporting lawmakers in the UK fear the backstop could be used to bind Britain to EU regulations indefinitely, and Prime Minister Theresa May wants to revise the deal to reassure opponents that it would only apply temporarily.

EU leaders insist that the legally binding Brexit withdrawal agreement can’t be reopened, though they are willing to add “clarifications” to ease British concerns.