UK PM May says divorce talks with European Union going to be tough

LONDON British Prime Minister Theresa May expects divorce talks with the European Union to be tough, she said on Sunday after EU leaders agreed stiff terms and voiced alarm at “illusions” in London that may wreck a deal.

“What this shows, and what some of the other comments we’ve seen coming from European leaders shows, is that there are going to be times when these negotiations are going to be tough,” May told the BBC a day after her EU peers agreed on demands they want met to avoid chaos when Britain leaves the bloc in 2019.

On Saturday, EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker accused unnamed pro-Brexit figures of underestimating the complexity of the task.

May, who came to power after Britons decided last year to leave the EU, has called an election for June 8 in the hope of strengthening her position, repeated her insistence that no deal would be better than a bad deal — a position many in Brussels view as bluff, arguing that the legal void that would dawn on March 30, 2019, would hurt Britain much more than the others.

But Juncker, quoted on Sunday by Germany’s FAS newspaper, highlighted growing fears that the two sides are talking past each other, raising a significant risk of negotiations collapsing.

“I’m leaving Downing Street 10 times more sceptical than I was before,” the paper quoted him as saying.