‘Britain won’t offer a new figure on bill’
London: Britain will not offer a figure or a formula for how much it believes it owes the European Union, Brexit minister David Davis said on Sunday, after the EU demanded that London spell out its approach to the final bill to unblock talks.
With no movement in the negotiations to unravel more than 40 years of union, Britain may miss a December deadline to move the talks to a discussion of future trade ties, which businesses say is vital for them to make investment decisions.
Both sides are frustrated by the lack of progress, and last week the EU negotiator, Michel Barnier, said Britain had two weeks to spell out how far it would “honour its obligations” to break the deadlock. But Mr Davis told Sky News the EU had agreed Britain would not need to offer “a number or a formula” for the financial deal when London accepted the bloc’s schedule for the talks — first a discussion about the divorce and second, about future ties.
But the EU called at talks in Brussels last week for Northern Ireland to effectively stay in a customs union with the bloc to prevent a hard border with Ireland.
The open border helped underpin the 1998 peace deal that ended decades of sectarian unrest.
“The tragic conflict between the Protestants and the Catholics was not that long ago,” Barnier, a former French foreign minister, told JDD. “I won’t do anything that could weaken” the 1998 accord. If a deal is reached by Barnier’s December 1 deadline, the next phase of talks could open in January towards a “new treaty.