EU LEADERS PRESSURE MAY ON BREXIT DEAL
SALZBURG: EU leaders refused to give ground to Britain’s Theresa May on Thursday, warning that her Brexit plan is unacceptable, even as she offered to come up with new proposals for the Irish border.
After this week offering to extend the deadline for a deal to a special summit in mid-November, EU leaders warned after talks in Salzburg that it would not happen without more progress.
EU Council President Donald Tusk and French President Emmanuel Macron tore into May’s plan for economic ties with the EU after Brexit, saying it simply “will not work” and was “not acceptable”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel also said there was “a lot of work to do” before the bloc could agree a political declaration on trade, which Britain wants as part of Brexit.
London and Brussels had originally said they wanted an agreement by October’s EU summit, but after months of stalled progress, Tusk suggested holding another one in November to clinch the agreement.
But he warned on Thursday that this would only work if progress can be made in the next four weeks.
May’s plan for Britain to follow EU rules on trade in goods after Brexit, despite leaving the bloc’s single market and customs union, has already sparked a backlash among eurosceptics at home.
She insisted it is the only way to provide the “frictionless” movement of goods on the frontier between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic.
However, May signalled that Britain may be willing to compromise on another sticking point in the talks, on a fall-back plan to avoid frontier checks until it can be resolved through a wider trade deal.