FOR BREXIT EFFORTS
trade relationship and security relationship,” she said.
A British government official said the prime minister was approaching the next phase, which would discuss a transition period and the terms of the future trading relationship, “with ambition and creativity”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her stamp of approval, but cautioned time was running out.
“We made clear that May has made an offer that should allow us to say that we have seen sufficient progress,” she said.
“Nevertheless, there are a lot of problems to solve, and time is of the essence.”
Summit chair Donald Tusk called May yesterday to update her after leaders discussed their next moves on Brexit.
May, weakened after losing her Conservative Party’s majority in a June election, has so far carried her divided government and party with her as she negotiated the first phase of talks on how much Britain should pay to leave EU, the border with Ireland and the status of EU citizens in Britain.
But the next, more decisive phase of the negotiations will further test her authority by exposing the deep rifts among her top team of ministers over what Britain should become after Brexit.
Acknowledging the difficulties ahead, Tusk warned EU leaders that only the unity they had displayed so far would deliver a good deal on trade, an issue on which the member states have different interests.
“I have no doubt that the real test of our unity will be the second phase of Brexit talks,” he said.
EU was willing to start talks next month on a roughly two-year transition period to ease Britain out after March next year, but had asked for more details from London on what it wanted before it would open trade negotiations.
The deal almost fell apart last week, when May’s Northern Irish allies rejected an initial agreement for fear that a promise to protect a free border with EU member Ireland could separate their region from the rest of the UK.
After days of fraught diplomacy, May rescued the deal to meet the EU’s requirements for “sufficient progress”, but the lastminute wobble by the Democratic Unionist Party, which she depended on in Parliament, and the defeat in Parliament on Wednesday, underlined the tightrope she was walking. Reuters