Brexit on the menu at May, Macron dinner
PARIS: British Prime Minister Theresa May headed to President Emmanuel Macron’s “summer Elysee Palace” on the Mediterranean coast yesterday, seeking to soften resistance to a Brexit plan which has upended her government while failing to win over sceptical EU negotiators.
She and Mr Macron will hold an “informal” two-hour meeting at Bregancon, a 17th-century fort long favoured by French presidents as a summer retreat.
“The plan was to go to Bregancon, which is to be a summer residence but also a place for working, and since May was finishing her vacation in Italy we proposed hosting her here,” a source in Mr Macron’s office said. Ms May is going to lay out “London’s position on the Brexit talks and its future relations with the EU”, the source said. “It will be the occasion to clarify this proposal and discuss the political context.”
There will be no press statement afterwards, because “there is absolutely no intention to speak in place of Michel Barnier”, the EU’s designated Brexit negotiator, the source added.
Pressure is growing on Ms May to win allies on the continent after her “Chequers plan” prompted two top ministers to resign in protest last month.
The prime minister has just a few months before an agreement on Britain’s divorce from the EU — set for March 29, 2019 — must be forged in principle ahead of a European summit in mid-October.
Mr Barnier has already shot down Ms May’s proposed solution to keeping the border between the UK and EU member Ireland open without a “hard border”.
Under Ms May’s proposal a dual system of taxation would be introduced which would see taxes levied by each side of the Irish border for the benefit of the other.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney told the BBC yesterday that the risk of a nodeal Brexit was “uncomfortably high” as talks entered a “critical phase”.
European l eaders have steadfastly voiced support for Mr Barnier, who wrote in a piece published in French and German newspapers on Thursday that Britain and the EU “are 80% in agreement on an exit deal”.
“But 80% is not 100%,” he warned. “Let’s be frank, the United Kingdom, having decided to leave the single market, cannot be as economically close as the rest of the EU.”
France is seen as taking a particularly hard line in the Brexit negotiations, especially on financial services, with Paris already expecting to get about 3,500 new banking jobs as leading players move operations out of London.