Britain and EU ‘get to work’ on Brexit talks
BRUSSELS: Britain and the European Union said they would get to the ‘heart of the matter’ as they launched a fresh round of fraught Brexit negotiations in Brussels yesterday.
Brexit minister David Davis met Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, to try to push through a deal ahead of Britain’s withdrawal from the bloc, scheduled for March 2019.
During four days of talks the two sides hope to make progress on key issues surrounding Britain’s withdrawal, including citizens’ rights and its exit bill, so that talks can move on to discuss a future trade deal later this year.
“Now it’s time to get down to work and make this a successful negotiation,” Davis told reporters as Barnier welcomed him to the headquarters of the European Commission.
“For us it’s incredibly important we now make good progress, that we negotiate through this and identify the differences so we can deal with them and identify the similarities so that we can reinforce them.”
Barnier, who has repeatedly called on weakened British Prime Minister Theresa May to quickly set out her divorce strategy, said they needed to ‘examine and compare our respective positions in order to make good progress.’
“We’ll now delve into the heart of the matter,” Barnier told reporters, declining questions until the end of this round of talks on Thursday. The talks are the first full round of negotiations that formally began last month with a one-day session to agree on a timetable.
The EU has demonstrated increasing confidence in recent weeks, accusing Britain of dithering over whether it wants a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Brexit more than a year after the shock referendum that propelled May to power.
Brussels insists it will only start discussing the future relationship once there has been ‘sufficient progress’ on the divorce – an estimated 100-billioneuro (US$112 billion) exit bill, the rights of three million EU citizens living in the UK, and the border in Northern Ireland. — AFP