‘Take it or leave it?’, EU offers May few options
Deal reached on Gibraltar
BRUSSELS, Oct 18, (Agencies): The European Union and Britain have given themselves a few more weeks to break the deadlock in their Brexit talks but for Brussels the delay seems mainly about Prime Minister Theresa May dealing with critics back in London.
An accord sketched by officials from both sides last weekend stalled because May’s fractious government rejected a “backstop” insurance clause the EU wants in case future talks fail to forge a trade pact that avoids customs posts on the Irish border.
An EU offer to extend a status-quo transition period by a year to end-2021, keeping Britain in a customs union to diminish the chances of the backstop being triggered, was not enough.
EU negotiator t pledged at a summit to keep working “calmly and patiently”. But many EU leaders see the main negotiations to be had now as being among May and her allies in London, possibly only after she gets a budget through parliament early next month. They see little scope now for the EU to move.
“We took our steps. We need to know what the other side wants - finally,” said Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite.
Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, 2019, less than three years since Britons voted for an exit in a referendum. “This is pretty much it,” an EU diplomat said of the weekend offer, which included a longer transition to give time for a customs deal. “This is the deal - if ever there’s to be one.” French President Emmanuel Macron noted the tricky “political balance” May faces at home – her vital Northern Irish allies say the EU’s backstop, by keeping Northern Ireland alone in the EU customs area, would break up the United Kingdom; and Brexit hardliners insist the UK must leave the EU customs union soon.
All governments insist, though, that they want a deal in the coming weeks that can avoid chaos when Britain leaves in March. There are limited ways to salvage an agreement. The status of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, a small isthmus on Spain’s southern coast, after Britain leaves the European Union has been agreed with Britain, Spain’s prime minister said on Thursday.
However, Spain and Britain were still negotiating in separate bilateral talks regarding Gibraltar, focusing on matters such as environmental issues, tax affairs and tobacco trade, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said.
Meanwhile, Britain’s International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt was heckled by an activist on Thursday as she unveiled measures to tackle the sexual exploitation scandal in the aid sector.
Hosting a “safeguarding summit” in London, Mordaunt was interrupted on stage by Alexia Pepper de Caires – a former whistleblower from Save the Children – who delivered a stinging rebuke of the gathering and the minister’s reform proposals.
The humanitarian sector has been rocked by a series of sexual abuse scandals in the last decade that has included some of the biggest names in the field, such as the United Nations and Oxfam.
Mordaunt was 10 minutes into a keynote speech announcing a new online platform with Interpol to help identify suspected sexual abusers working for nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) when she was interrupted.
In related news, British police on Thursday challenged web companies to better patrol the online sex trade after announcing dozens of arrests and the rescue of at least 90 suspected slaves in a crackdown.