Tusk tells May: EU won’t budge on the backstop
THERESA May was dealt an immediate blow last night after EU chief Donald Tusk emphatically warned the bloc would not renegotiate the customs backstop.
The Prime Minister is embarking on a whistle-stop tour of EU capitals to try to win concessions as she sent her chief Brexit adviser back to Brussels.
On Thursday, a two-day summit in Brussels begins, giving Mrs May another chance to negotiate after cancelling the Commons vote on her deal.
But member states believe the last- ditch talks are doomed if her demands involve any significant changes to the withdrawal treaty – the legally binding part of the deal which contains the controversial backstop plan.
EU Council chief Donald Tusk confirmed this last night by ruling out any full-blown renegotiation.
He added, however, that the bloc was open to discussions about how to ‘facilitate’ Mrs May getting the deal through Parliament.
Last night he tweeted: ‘ We will not renegotiate the deal, including the backstop, but we are ready to discuss how to facilitate UK ratification. As time is running out, we will also discuss our preparedness for a no-deal scenario.’
Mrs May’s chief Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, was said by EU sources to be in Brussels yesterday to secure a ‘legally binding commitment’ that Britain could not end up trapped in the backstop customs arrangement – designed to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland – indefinitely.
But they also warned her best hope was of securing socalled ‘side- statements’ or ‘tweaks’ to the political declaration on the future relationship – the non-legally-binding part of the overall deal. EU leaders and foreign ministers yesterday lined up to reject the idea of any major changes.
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar, thought to be one of the biggest opponents of any moves to soften the backstop, blamed the stand-off on Mrs May’s red lines.
He also appeared to warn that reopening the withdrawal agreement could lead to other issues such as access to UK fishing waters being revisited.
Several member states had demanded guaranteed access to UK waters for their fishing fleets be written into the deal. Speaking in Dublin yesterday Mr Varadkar said: ‘The withdrawal agreement including the Irish backstop is the only agreement on the table.
‘It took over a year and a half to negotiate and it’s not possible to reopen any aspect of that agreement without opening all aspects of it.
‘The UK decided to leave the EU and the UK government decided to take lots of options off the table, whether it was staying inside the single market or customs union or a Northern Ireland- specific backstop, so the reason we ended up with the solution we have is because of the red lines the UK itself laid down.’