Give me a deal to defend, May implores EU
THERESA MAY has appealed to EU leaders to give her a deal that she can “defend” to the British people as she rejected their demands to accept a huge Brexit divorce bill.
The Prime Minister said at a dinner in Brussels last night that there was a “clear and urgent imperative” for the EU to break the Brexit deadlock and move on to trade talks.
A succession of EU leaders told Mrs May that she must make a clear commitment to paying a Brexit divorce bill if she wants talks to progress.
Mrs May rejected demands by leading figures in the Leave campaign to declare formally that she is prepared to walk away from the EU if talks do not progress. She instead called for “joint effort and endeavour” and for negotiations to be conducted in a new spirit so that Britain and the EU can “move forward together”.
A senior government official acknowledged, however, that she was “working against a difficult political backdrop” amid growing calls for her to walk away without a deal. Mrs May said: “Both sides have agreed subsequent rounds will be conducted in a new spirit. There is increasingly a sense that we must work together to an outcome we can stand behind and defend to our people.”
Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, said Mrs May’s speech in Florence was an “important” step and promised to maintain a constructive atmosphere but added that both sides would need to work to achieve a “good outcome”.
Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister and one of Britain’s strongest allies in Europe, revealed that he had personally appealed to Mrs May for more clarity on the Brexit divorce bill before talks could move forward. He said Mrs May had given “some more detail and background on what she said in Florence. That was helpful but there were no new proposals today.”
Michael Fuchs, vice-chairman of Angela Merkel’s CDU party, said yesterday that he believed the divorce bill figure should be between €60 billion and € 100 billion (£54 billion and £90 billion). He said the €20billion (£18billion) the UK has offered “is definitely not enough”. The Daily Telegraph understands there are still fundamental differences over whether the European Court of Justice should be able to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the UK.
The Prime Minister told EU leaders that she “took stock” in the summer after she “recognised the difficulty the negotiating process was in”.
Damian Green, the First Secretary of State, said yesterday that there was no prospect of Britain walking away from Brexit negotiations in “coming weeks”. The Government said it had delayed its flagship Brexit Bill amid concerns it would be defeated after Labour and Tory rebels tabled 300 amendments.
‘There is increasingly a sense we must work together to an outcome we can stand behind’
EU CITIZENS living in Britain could be given a window of time during which their families would be allowed to move into the UK after Brexit, David Davis has suggested.
The Brexit Secretary hinted that the Government was looking at offering fresh concessions on citizens’ rights to get negotiations moving on a trade deal with the EU.
He raised the possibility that EU nationals could enjoy the same family reunion rights as they do now for a limited period of time after Brexit in
March 2019.
Concerns had been raised that Theresa May’s offer to give three million EU nationals in Britain “settled status”, subject to certain tests, watered down their rights to family reunion.
But in an interview with European newspapers, Mr Davis said: “The issue is that in order to give perpetuity on family rights it would give to three million people in the UK rights that British citizens themselves don’t have.
“I am trying to think of a way, maybe a short-term way, of sorting this, a certain window whatever.” Asked if the window could be five or 10 years, Mr Davis replied: “Whatever that might be, might be a bit shorter than that. We haven’t engaged on that negotiation properly, it’s next on the agenda. We will talk about that.”
Mr Davis’s comments mark a significant shift from his remarks earlier this month at the end of the fifth round of Brexit negotiations, when he said that the right to bring in family members was one of the issues “on which we have not yet arrived at a solution”.
Family members are generally accepted as dependent children, spouses and parents, but could also possibly include cousins.
It comes after Theresa May posted a message on Facebook which stated: “We want families to stay together”.
Mr Davis said a “no deal” outcome was “a very distant possibility” and that preparations for no deal were an “insurance policy”.
He said: “It is no part of our negotiating strategy, and no plan of our planning for the future in terms of what we intend.”
He called on EU leaders to allow Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator, more “leeway” in his mandate so that he can begin talks about the transition period now.
He said: “Also we’d like him at least to prepare for the future relationship. Some people say progress is slow. By EU standards this negotiation has been lightning fast.”
Mr Davis said that on the issue of European Court of Justice oversight of migrants’ rights, the EU should trust British courts and accept that they were not “patsies” to the Government, as they had been overturning Government decisions for centuries.
He added: “Europeans in America don’t have protection of the ECJ, Americans in the UK have no protection from the Supreme Court. There is a point at which we have to say this is a good judicial system, one of the best in the world.”
Mr Davis was also asked if his military training in the Territorial Army’s 21 SAS Regiment had helped with his negotiating skills.
He replied: “Well, I never killed anyone…”