EU steps up hardened exit warning
BRUSSELS: Just as London appears to be coming round to the idea that it will need a temporary transitional agreement with Brussels to smooth its exit from the European Union (EU), it may find the position of European leaders has hardened.
For months the working assumption in Brussels has been that it would be impossible to manage Britain’s exit from the EU by a 2019 deadline without a temporary transitional deal to govern trade terms until a final arrangement can be hammered out.
The idea is favoured by businesses on both sides of the channel who want to minimise uncertainty, and by the technocrats tasked with hammering out a deal, who say a final pact cannot be reached in time. The only people who didn’t seem to like it were hardliners in London who said they preferred a clean break. But with Prime Minister Theresa May lately softening her “Brexit means Brexit” rhetoric to emphasise the need to avoid forcing businesses off a “cliff edge”, the positions of European leaders only seem to have hardened.
Senior European officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity no longer sound convinced that a transitional deal is as inevitable as it once seemed.
“The technicians of course say it’s obvious. But frankly, politically it’s not at all,” a senior EU official told Reuters. “Do the Brits really want it? On the kind of terms we can offer? “There’s a real danger they will just fall off the cliff.”
London shift
May intends to set a two-year clock running on Britain’s exit negotiations by late March. She is due to give a speech on Tuesday, and any hint she gives that she will accept a transitional arrangement could make headlines.
While she has so far given few details of her negotiating position, Britain unmistakably softened its stance on a transitional arrangement last month. David Davis, the cabinet minister tasked with overseeing exit from the European Union, said in early December he was “not really interested” in a temporary deal. But a week later British newspapers carried reports that he had privately said he was not opposed to one.