European head pans Brexit plan

U.K. faces many issues in departing EU, Italian says

BRUSSELS — The head of the European Parliament derided British plans to leave the European Union on Wednesday, saying they had not thought it through and faced problems for their trade, including vital food imports.

The comments by Antonio Tajani, whose institution must sign off on any divorce deal before Britain leaves in March 2019, followed remarks Tuesday in which the Italian dismissed British Prime Minister Theresa May’s offer of some 20 billion euros on departure as “peanuts” and about a third of what London owes.

“They risk having fewer possibilities than EU countries, even in trade,” said Tajani, dismissing talk in Britain of doing more trade with former colonies in the Commonwealth as a flawed reliance on a “structure from the past.”

“Maybe they didn’t do their sums right when they decided to hold their referendum,” Tajani, a conservative ally of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, told Italian reporters.

“Britain won’t gain much from leaving the EU. … They aren’t self-sufficient in food. There are so many problems.”

On the eve of an EU summit where Prime Minister Theresa May will urge fellow leaders to unblock talks on a free trade deal, parliament’s Brexit coordinator, former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, hit out at May’s Brexit negotiator David Davis for accusing British members of the European Parliament in Brussels of being unpatriotic.

May suspended two of her Conservative members of the European Parliament last week for voting in favor of a motion brought by Verhofstadt saying that Britain must make more concessions to open trade talks.

She also criticized opposition lawmakers who backed the Verhofstadt motion, saying they were not helping the process of agreeing an implementation period.

Verhofstadt, a liberal, said Davis had also written to British Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable asking him to “take action” against Libdem member of the European Parliament Catherine Bearder for voting in the same way.

“At first I thought this letter was a hoax,” Verhofstadt said in a statement. “I will raise my concerns officially with … David Davis, when we next meet.

“It is deeply troubling that a government minister would use his office to infer that a democratically elected politician was acting in a traitorous or unpatriotic manner. … This strikes me as profoundly un-british.”