May’s last-gasp Brexit meeting

DEAL: BRITISH PM TO RETURN TO BRUSSELS FOR TALKS

Withdrawal treaty is due to be signed at a summit on Sunday.

Brussels

Negotiations to secure an orderly Brexit deal will go down to the wire after Theresa May said she would return to Brussels for more talks on the eve of a planned signing summit.

After an inconclusive trip to Brussels to meet EU chief JeanClaude Juncker, the British prime minister said she would return tomorrow to finalise preparations for a full EU meeting the next day.

It is believed that the texts of the deal will not be final before a meeting today of top EU diplomats – the summit’s so-called “sherpas” – frustrating some European leaders.

“There are some further issues that need resolution. We have given direction to our negotiators this evening.

“The work on those issues will now start immediately,” May said in a statement from Downing Street on Wednesday.

“I believe we have been able to give sufficient direction for them to be able to resolve those remaining issues,” she said, adding that she would meet Juncker again tomorrow.

With less than four days until Sunday’s meeting, a European Commission spokesperson said: “Very good progress was made in meeting between President Juncker and Prime Minister Theresa May.”

But she added: “Work is continuing.”

News of tomorrow’s last-ditch meeting will not go down well in Berlin, where Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel had earlier urged negotiators not to reopen talks on the main withdrawal agreement.

“I hope it will be solved by Sunday,” she told German lawmakers. “We know how difficult the discussions are in Britain, but I can say for the German government that we agree with this exit agreement.”

Negotiators are hammering out details of a political statement on future UK-EU ties that will accompany the divorce deal, under pressure to put it together before the sherpa meeting today.

After enduring another parliamentary grilling at prime minister’s questions in London, May crossed the Channel to meet the head of the EU executive.

Having seen off a potential leadership challenge by hardline Brexiteers in her own party, she hoped to wring out of Brussels a Brexit arrangement that she can sell to her parliament.

The withdrawal treaty itself is all but final and preparations are under way for Sunday’s summit to sign it, but there remains the matter of the parallel 20-page political declaration on future relations. –