Long goodbye? May ready to delay Brexit by months
THERESA May is facing a backlash from Brexiteers after she confirmed she is ready to consider a delay of ‘a matter of months’ in Britain’s final departure from the EU in order to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
Mrs May indicated at a Brussels summit on Wednesday that she was not ruling out the UK remaining in the single market and customs union and subject to EU rules as late as the end of 2021.
Such a move would delay the final departure almost three years after the official date of Brexit on March 29, 2019, potentially costing the UK as much as £10 billion (€11billion) in additional contributions to the EU budgets. Arriving for the second day of the European Council summit, Mrs May made clear she would accept an extension only as a means to ensure there was no hard border in Ireland if it proved impossible to implement the future partnership by the end of 2020.
‘A further idea that has emerged – and it is an idea at this stage – is to create an option to extend the implementation period for a matter of months, and it would only be for a matter of months,’ she said.
‘But the point is that this is not expected to be used, because we are working to ensure that we have that future relationship in place by the end of December 2020. I’m clear it is possible to do that and that is what we are working for.’
‘In those circumstances, there would be no need for any proposal of this sort and I’m clear that I expect the implementation period to end at the end of December 2020,’ she said.
Yesterday, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that while a lot had been agreed, there were still ‘big gaps both in terms of the shape of the future relationship and also the protocol on Northern Ireland and Ireland and the backstop’.
European Council President Donald Tusk said if ‘the UK decided an extension of the transition period, it would be helpful to reach a deal, I am sure the leaders would be ready to consider this positively.’
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the extension of the transition period ‘will probably happen’, calling it a good idea, because it would allow more time to draw up a long-term relationship between the UK and the EU. But the proposal faces strong opposition from Brexiteers and the DUP, who are propping up her government.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said any extension to the transition period could delay full withdrawal almost until the general election scheduled for May 2022, and ‘may mean we never leave at all’.