Britain gives ground in EU exit talks
Concessions made on Irish border, European citizens’ rights, payments to bloc
BRUSSELS — Britain agreed Friday to a series of concessions to the European Union in negotiating its split from the bloc, leaders said, as Prime Minister Theresa May overcame bitter divisions in her own nation to advance to a new phase of talks.
The agreement amounts to a capitulation by May on issues dear to the European Union: preserving peace in Northern Ireland, guaranteeing rights for the 3 million EU citizens living in Britain, and living up to British funding commitments in Europe for decades to come.
On those issues and a host of others, Britain has been forced to yield to the European Union after saying earlier this year that it held the upper hand in the negotiations. Instead, British negotiators have found a largely united European Union that sees little need to give in to London’s demands. Friday’s agreement appears likely to unlock the next phase of the negotiations, focused on trade between the European Union and Britain after it exits in March 2019.
Both sides warned that the next round of talks will be harder than the first round, which lasted eight months.
“It hasn’t been easy for either side,” May said in an early-morning news conference in Brussels after all-night talks, after a disagreement over borders between Northern Ireland and Ireland nearly derailed the deal earlier this week. She called the deal “a hard-won agreement in all our interests.”
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he planned to recommend that European leaders approve advancing the talks when they meet at a summit next week. They are expected to follow his advice.
“Sufficient progress has now been made on the strict terms of the divorce,” Juncker said. “This was a difficult negotiation for the European Union as well as for the United Kingdom.”
Despite the victorious mood on both sides, significant tensions appeared to remain embedded in the agreement over the divorce deal, which will not be finalized until the very end of the full exit negotiation. British factions have squabbled about how to preserve the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which depends on a borderless passage between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, as Britain seeks new trade independence that would typically require a border.
Friday’s deal appears to kick the can down the road on the topic, with Britain agreeing to maintain “full alignment” with EU customs and trade regulations in the absence of other solutions to preserve a borderless island of Ireland.
May has had to thread a needle between the tiny Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party, which supports her weak government in Parliament and wants to ensure a seamless relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom, and hard-line exit advocates who want maximum independence from the European Union.
“The Good Friday Agreement in all of its parts is protected,” said Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who pushed in recent weeks for the open border.
The two sides also compromised on how the rights of European citizens will be guaranteed in post-exit Britain. The European Union has pushed for an oversight role for the European Court of Justice, a judicial body in Luxembourg that anti-EU advocates in Britain have long loathed as a symbol of lost sovereignty. The agreement said the court would keep watch over citizens’ rights for eight years.
And Britain would agree to keep paying its budget commitments to the European Union for years to come, a proposal that avoids paying a single lump sum that could be politically unpopular but would saddle London with EU budget obligations for decades. Estimates of the total bill range from $53 billion to $65 billion, more than double what May originally offered after triggering departure talks in March.
At every step of the negotiation, May has had to contend with roiling domestic politics that have pulled the British leader in conflicting directions. Her position was further weakened after she lost her parliamentary majority in June, making her more vulnerable both to exit hard-liners who want as final a rupture as possible and to doves advocating a more robust relationship with Europe.
The result has been to make it even harder to present a strong hand to the Europeans sitting across the table.
That means that some exit advocates endorsed Friday’s deal, even as others derided it.
“She’s gotten a deal in the interests of the whole U.K.,” said Michael Gove in a BBC interview, giving his sign-off as a leading exit hard-line campaigner.
Nigel Farage, the former leader of U.K. Independence Party and a staunch advocate of separation, said May was now able to “move on to the next stage of humiliation.” He called the deal “pathetic.”