Euro leaders praise May
BRUSSELS: European leaders applauded British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday for her work so far on Brexit, assuring her at a summit in Brussels that sufficient progress has been made to allow Britain to move on to the next stage of leaving the union.
A day after she suffered a defeat in Parliament over her blueprint for quitting the EU, May told her peers she was on course to deliver Brexit and urged them to speed up the talks to unravel more than 40 years of membership.
After she updated them on progress, and told them Britain’s departure was ‘‘in the best interests of the UK and the European Union’’, they offered her a brief round of applause.
‘‘She is our colleague. Britain is a member state. We are not only trying to be, but we are polite and friendly people,’’ European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker said.
As she left to return to London — she did not join the other 27 leaders for further discussions on Brexit and the euro zone — May said she was eager to move on, once her peers give the formal green light to trade talks.
‘‘We’ve had very good discussions,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m looking forward to the discussions . . . on the future trade relationship and security relationship.’’
A British government official said the Prime Minister was approaching the next phase, which will discuss a transition period as well as the terms of the future trading relationship, ‘‘with ambition and creativity’’.
May, weakened after losing her Conservative Party’s majority in a June election, has so far carried her divided government and party with her as she negotiated the first phase of talks on how much Britain should pay to leave the EU, the border with Ireland and the status of EU citizens in Britain.
But the next, more decisive phase of the negotiations will further test her authority by exposing the deep rifts among her top team of ministers over what Britain should become after Brexit. — Reuters