We’re ready for talks tomorrow, taunts Juncker
The EU sought to take advantage of Britain’s predicament, with Jeanclaude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, saying Brussels was ready to begin talks “tomorrow at half-past nine”. Theresa May’s failure to win a majority was derided as an “own goal”.
EUROPEAN Union leaders piled pressure on Britain to start Brexit negotiations yesterday, as they sought to take advantage of the UK’S political predicament after Theresa May’s failure to win a majority left her negotiating strategy in disarray.
Even as the Prime Minister struggled to form a minority government, Jean-claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, openly taunted Mrs May that the EU side was ready to “open negotiations tomorrow morning at half past nine”.
Having already delayed talks once by calling the surprise election in April, Mrs May’s failure to go on to win the promised mandate was derided as a spectacular “own goal” that risked a damaging result for both sides.
“Yet another own goal,” said Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s leading Brexit co-ordinator, reflecting EU exasperation with Britain over the handling of the negotiation. “After Cameron now May, [this result] will make already complex negotiations even more complicated.”
Before the election, Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator, had said that talks should begin on June 19 – a date Mrs May had appeared to endorse on the campaign trail – but which EU sources conceded privately now looks increasingly unrealistic. Mr Barnier said that negotiations “should start when UK is ready”, urging both sides to work for a deal but also noting that both the “timetable and EU positions are clear” – a reminder that the two-year timeframe set for talks under Article 50 is now rapidly ebbing away.
Donald Tusk, the European Council president, was more explicit in his warnings to Mrs May, writing formally to the Prime Minister to congratulate her on her re-appointment while noting that there was “no time to lose” over talks. Our shared responsibility and urgent task now is to conduct the negotiations on the UK’S withdrawal from the European Union in the best possible spirit, securing the least disruptive outcome,” he wrote.
Somewhat more menacingly, he added on social media: “We don’t know when Brexit talks start. We know when they must end. Do your best to avoid a ‘no deal’ as result of ‘no negotiations’.”
Officially, the EU said it was simply putting the ball in the UK’S court to begin talks, but the apparent rejection of Mrs May’s vision for a so-called “hard Brexit” was also seen in some quarters as a rejection of a hardline position by the British electorate.
Regional analysts said the lack of conciliation by EU leaders reflected mounting frustration with Britain in Brussels and the belief that the inconclusive election result hands the EU even more leverage in the coming negotiation. “This result will play to and reinforce the EU’S negotiating hand,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis at Eurasia Group. “May’s significantly weakened mandate, and the ticking Article 50 clock, will give the EU more leverage to dictate terms to the UK.”
The warnings also reflected concerns in Brussels and EU capitals that political disarray in London now risks dragging out the talks beyond the March 2019 deadline set for Brexit. One senior EU aide told The Daily Telegraph that it was “ludicrous” for Mrs May even to try to form a government, saying that she “no longer had any credibility” in Brussels.
That view was echoed across Europe where Mrs May suffered a personal mauling in the continental press, with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine nicknaming her the “wobbly woman” while Italy’s Corriere della Sera opined that Mrs May is “no Margaret Thatcher”. “May-day” was the headline in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, noting that British voters were “insecure, angry and upset”, while Die Welt commented that “Brexit means Brexit – so
‘Her authority in her own party is broken. She has become a weak prime minister and negotiator’
much for that”. “Theresa May’s authority in her own party is broken,” added Elmar Brok, the Brexit representative for Angela Merkel’s faction in the European parliament.
“She has become a weak prime minister and negotiator.”
Britain was hoping to complete initial talks by October this year, with a view to completing negotiations over trade and the future EU-UK relationship by October 2018. Mr Barnier set the October 2018 target in order to leave time for the deal to be ratified by the European Parliament in order to complete an orderly UK exit in March 2019.
The Article 50 process can be extended by unanimous agreement but lawyers are divided over whether Article 50 can actually be withdrawn. The UK Supreme Court has said it is irrevocable, but Mr Tusk has said he believes it is possible to pull out.
That was a possibility discounted by both Tories and Labour but still openly mooted in some quarters yesterday. “Who knows, perhaps British society will decide it’s worth remaining after all in a Europe of nation states,” said Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish finance minister.
Elsewhere in Europe the sudden upending of the expected talks schedule was seen as a “bad sign” for Europe, with Jaroslaw Gowin, a deputy prime minister in Poland’s conservative government, warning it “deepened the uncertainties” over the future of the bloc.
In Hungary, the news website Index described the result as a “slap in the face for May”.
UUS President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron called British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday to congratulate her. “French President Emmanuel Macron… said he was pleased that she would continue to be a close partner,” a spokesman for Mrs May’s office said in a statement. “They agreed that the strong friendship between our two countries was important and would endure.”
The spokesman said May and Trump had also agreed to continue the close cooperation between the two countries.