UK submits proposals
BRUSSELS: Britain has submitted some proposals in writing of how it would like the stalled Brexit deal to be amended, a spokeswoman for the European Union’s executive Commission said last night.
‘‘We have received documents from the UK and on this basis we will have technical discussion today and tomorrow on some aspects of customs, manufactured goods and sanitary and phytosanitary rules,’’ Mina Andreeva said.
She added EU and British Brexit negotiators, Michel Barnier and Stephen Barclay, would also discuss Brexit in Brussels tonight.
A UK government spokesman said: ‘‘We have now shared in written form a series of confidential technical nonpapers which reflect the ideas the UK has been putting forward.’’
The European Union had warned yesterday Britain was headed for a nodeal Brexit.
‘‘There is very little time left . . . The risk of a nodeal is very real,’’ European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg.
A majority of EU lawmakers later voted for an extension to Britain’s departure date.
Juncker said London must present realistic proposals to replace the Irish backstop arrangement in the divorce agreement, which former premier Theresa May agreed with EU leaders but was rejected by the British Parliament.
Many EU lawmakers warned against a nodeal, to avoid an economic shock and because they do not want to see Britain abandon its commitments to EU social and environmental standards and become a lowtax, lowregulation rival.
‘‘We will not accept a Singapore on the North Sea,’’ said former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, a member of the parliament’s Brexit committee.
In an at times badtempered debate underscoring general weariness on the tortured issue of Britain’s pending departure, senior EU lawmakers took jabs at the noisy contingent of British eurosceptic deputies in the chamber.
‘‘Brexiteers claimed Westminster would take back control, but now they shut it down,’’ said German lawmaker Manfred Weber, as the Supreme Court in London continued hearing arguments on whether Johnson acted unlawfully in suspending Parliament in the runup to Brexit. — Reuters