May flies to Brussels today for emergency talks to rescue Brexit,
MPS taken aback as the Prime Minister leaves for meeting with EU leaders today to break deadlock
THERESA MAY will travel to Brussels today for talks with EU leaders amid reports that she has personally urged Angela Merkel to end the Brexit stand-off.
The meeting comes days after Jeanclaude Juncker, the president of the EU Commission, and Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief negotiator, said talks about Britain leaving the EU in March 2019 were deadlocked.
Mrs May is taking Oliver Robbins, the civil servant leading the Brexit talks, with her for the dinner – the first since a frosty meal in Downing Street in April. Mr Juncker was reported to have launched a scathing attack on Mrs May during the April dinner, saying that Brexit “cannot be a success”.
Mrs May, who will also be joined by Brexit Secretary David Davis, is expected to have discussions with European counterparts over the coming days ahead of a meeting of all EU leaders later in the week.
Downing Street sources insisted today’s meeting had “been in the diary for weeks” but the announcement caused surprise in Westminster, and comes after last week’s negotiations ended with little movement.
The visit comes a day after Mrs May phoned Mrs Merkel, the German Chancellor, to urge her to help end the Brexit stand-off at this week’s EU summit in Brussels. France and Germany are understood to have pushed for changes to a draft paper prepared for Thursday’s summit to avoid giving the impression that the EU will agree guidelines on a transition period as soon as “sufficient progress” has been made in issues relating to the exit.
No10 is keen to open the next stage of talks about Britain’s relationship with the EU after Brexit. A colleague of Mrs May told The Financial Times: “We’ve almost run out of things to talk about. It comes down to money: by discussing the transition deal at the same time, you create a broader framework for talking about the money.”
The news came amid concern a nodeal Brexit could place added strain of up to £500million a year on the NHS. A report backed by the NHS Confederation suggests that tens of thousands of British pensioners living in Europe could return home if the Government is unable to strike a deal with the EU to continue existing healthcare arrangements. Under EU law, European citizens benefit from reciprocal rights to healthcare when they are in any of the 28 member states. Brussels and the UK are currently negotiating on what will happen to those rights after Britain’s withdrawal in March 2019.
The report, compiled by the Brexit Health Alliance, warns that patients could suffer dramatically if reciprocal rights to healthcare were scrapped, because they could face huge medical bills if they fall ill while travelling abroad, while the cost of travel insurance could prove prohibitive for people with existing conditions.
The £500million figure is based on analysis that estimates the cost of caring for everyone who could return to the UK at £1billion a year, minus the £500 million that would no longer have to be paid to European health systems. It does not take into account any income that could be generated from EU citizens potentially having to pay for NHS care when they are in the UK.