‘Big gap’ as Brexit talks start again

AGENDA: CITIZENS RIGHTS, IRELAND BORDER, EXIT BILL

London wants talks on future ties held concurrently but the EU has refused.

Britain and the European Union (EU) kicked off a third round of Brexit talks yesterday, with London impatient to agree its future relationship with the bloc while Brussels insists the divorce settlement comes first.

The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, met his British counterpart David Davis in Brussels for a first exchange, followed by three days of discussions. The EU says there has to be “sufficient progress” in three key areas – EU citizen rights, Northern Ireland’s border and the exit bill – before it can consider London’s demand for talks on future ties in October.

Britain says it would be best to negotiate the two in parallel and that settling trade issues may even help with other problems such as the future EU-UK border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. That is a complete no-go for Brussels which made no secret that it expects little progress in bridging what officials last week called a “very big gap”.

The situation is complicated by sharp divisions within Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government after a June election gamble backfired and she lost her parliamentary majority. May remains in office thanks to a deal with Northern Ireland’s ultra-conservative Democratic Unionist Party which views the 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.

In another position paper, Britain said the European Court of Justice (ECJ) might 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 which is the remit of the ECJ, they added. “There is no other possibility,” one official said.

As for Britain’s divorce settlement – estimated at up to €100 billion (R2 trillion) in Brussels but much less at €40 billion according to reports in London – the EU officials said the talks were not about fixing a number but about agreeing how to work out the bill.

In what the European Commission said was “absolutely nothing extraordinary”, former British premier Tony Blair is due to meet Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker on Thursday as the Brexit talks wind up. Blair is very pro-EU and anti-Brexit. –