Divided UK & EU start Brexit talks’ new round
Ireland calls for realism
BRUSSELS, Aug 28, (Agencies): Britain and the EU kick off a third round of Brexit talks Monday still sharply divided over what comes first — London’s future relationship with the bloc or the costly divorce settlement.
The European Union says there has to be “sufficient progress” in three key areas — EU citizen rights, Northern Ireland’s border and the exit bill — before it will turn to post-Brexit arrangements, possibly beginning in October.
Britain says the two strands should be negotiated in parallel, arguing that progress on a free trade deal may even help resolve other sticky issues such as the future EU-UK border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
That is a complete no-go for Brussels, with officials saying they expected little progress in bridging a “very big gap” at this week’s talks.
They also blamed Britain for a “lack of substance” despite a flurry of position papers they said were strong on aspiration but short on detail.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier meanwhile listed on Twitter the EU’s own negotiating documents, noting: “EU positions clear and transparent since day one.”
Barnier meets his British counterpart David Davis late afternoon for a first exchange, followed by three days of talks and a joint press conference.
Both sides have repeatedly warned that the clock is ticking down to the March 2019 Brexit deadline and that they are the ones doing their best to make progress.
Davis said Monday this week’s talks were all about “driving forward the technical discussions across all the issues.”
“In order to do that, we’ll require flexibility and imagination from both sides,” he said.
“We’re ready to roll up our sleeves and get down to work once more.”
Asked about the British approach, the European Commission refused to be drawn Monday.
“Let’s have the negotiators do their negotiation ... as for flexibility, we are working within the mandate given us by the European Council (of member states),” EU spokeswoman Lucia Caudet said.
The talks take place amid continued turmoil in Britain, with the opposition Labour Party over the weekend backing a “soft” Brexit whereby the country remains in the EU’s customs union and single market for a transition period.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said she wants Britain unequivocally out of both but her position has been crippled since a June election gamble backfired and she lost her parliamentary majority.
Deal
May remains in office thanks to a deal with Northern Ireland’s ultra-conservative Democratic Unionist Party which views the EU-member Republic with deep suspicion.
EU officials warned last week that the hard-won Northern Ireland peace process could not be used as a bargaining chip.
London’s hopeful suggestion that technology could help prevent the border becoming a physical barrier to trade and the peace process was just “a lot of magical thinking,” one EU official said.
Britain also said the European Court of Justice could continue to have an indirect influence, softening its position that the EU’s top court would not have any say in the country at all.
But again this was not enough, EU officials said.
The rights of more than three million EU citizens in Britain and one million Britons in Europe arose from EU law remains the remit of the ECJ.
“There is no other possibility,” one official said.
As for Britain’s divorce settlement — estimated at up to 100 billion euros in Brussels but much less at 40 billion according to reports in London — EU officials said the talks were not about fixing a number but about agreeing how to work out the bill.
“We have to have a methodology sufficiently detailed so that commitments made to various beneficiaries of the EU budget will be honoured,” one of the EU officials said.
Meanwhile, the opposition Labour Party has said it would keep Britain in the European single market and customs union for a transitional period after Brexit, offering an alternative to the government line after months of uncertainty over Labour’s position.
The party would seek to maintain the “same basic terms” with the European Union, including the free movement of people, beyond March 2019 when Britain is set to leave the bloc, Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said.
Labour wanted to avoid a damaging “cliff edge” for Britain’s economy that might be caused by an abrupt separation in less than two years’ time.
It would aim to keep a form of customs union with the EU, and possibly agree a new relationship with the single market, subject to negotiations, Starmer wrote in Sunday’s Observer newspaper.
Senior ministers in May’s Conservative government have ruled out remaining in the single market and customs union during any transitional phase following Brexit.
Starmer said following EU rules for a period would allow goods and services to continue to flow between the EU and Britain without tariffs, customs checks or additional red tape.
Labour recognised that a transitional deal would not provide long-term certainty or resolve the question of migration, one of the key issues for voters in the referendum in 2016.
Period
“That is why a transitional period under Labour will be as short as possible, but as long as necessary,” he added.
Starmer’s comments follow a long period of uncertainty and division over the party’s position on Brexit under leftwing leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Conservatives said Labour’s new policy was a “weak attempt to kick the can down the road”.
“Their leader can’t say they would end unlimited freedom of movement, they can’t decide whether we are leaving the single market and they have no vision for what Britain should look like outside the EU,” a spokesman said.
In related news, much of the future border arrangements between Northern Ireland and Ireland can be solved before Brexit talks enter the next phase, Ireland’s foreign minister said, urging Britain to be realistic in negotiating terms to leave the European Union.
British officials arrive in Brussels on Monday to push the EU towards talks about their postBrexit ties, which the bloc refuses to do without an agreement first on London’s exit bill and other divorce issues.
Among those issues is the conundrum of the currently invisible border between EU member state Ireland and Britain’s province of Northern Ireland, a matter fraught with economic consequences and politically complexities.
“We want some realism. There is a suggestion in the British government papers on Ireland that really the Irish border issues can only be solved in the context of a free trade agreement and I think there is a lot we can do in advance of that,” Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told national broadcaster RTE.
As part of a series of papers published by London this month it hopes will push forward talks with the EU, Britain said there should be no border posts or immigration checks on the neighbouring island of Ireland once London quits the EU in 2019.
At the same time, Britain’s Conservative government intends to regain complete control over immigration as part of Brexit, raising questions how this would work if there was a “back door” into Britain along an open land frontier with Ireland.
The Irish government, which had grown critical Britain’s approach to the talks, welcomed what it called significant progress in the papers but reiterated on Monday that London now must spell out in detail how their plan could be implemented.
“It’s up to the UK this week to outline how the position papers, particularly in relation to Ireland and the border issues, can actually work,” Coveney said.
“Many in the EU, while they accept what Britain wants, they don’t see how the negotiating approach can achieve that.”