Controversial start to Brexit talks
BELGIUM: Britain deployed nearly 100 negotiators to Brussels yesterday in a bureaucratic show of force that saw the Brexit negotiating team outnumber their EU counterparts two to one.
After months of goading from the European Union that the United Kingdom was failing to fully engage, the 98-strong team of officials from across Whitehall arrived for the first substantive face-to-face talks at the European Commission.
The deployment was lost in the main image of the opening day of talks, however, after David Davis and Olivier Robbins, the UK’s top Brexit officials, were photographed facing chief European chief negotiator for Brexit Michel Barnier in a meeting room but without any documents.
In the photo, taken minutes before Davis jetted back to London for a parliamentary vote, the EU’s top negotiators struck stern expressions behind their thick sheaves of paper, while the British team grinned for the camera but with their side of the table empty.
The image provoked a deluge of comment on social media about the lack of preparedness for the talks. The UK staff later insisted the photo was taken before they had unpacked their bags.
‘‘We have less than 20 months of Brexit talks left, yet David Davis has skulked back to the UK after just half a day,’’ said Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman. ’’He didn’t have any position papers with him because this government has no agreed Brexit position.’’
The Labour Party was also critical of Davis, who spent less than three hours in Brussels, including a one-to-one meeting with Barnier to discuss the objectives of the week, which officials described as ‘‘friendly’’.
‘‘Mr Davis can hardly say this is the time ‘to get down to business’ and then spend only a few minutes in Brussels before heading back to Whitehall,’’ said Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary.
Before the British negotiators got down to business, starting with a ‘‘line by line’’ rebuttal of the EU’s demand for a gross £100 billion financial settlement, they were given a rousing pep talk by Robbins.
‘‘Ollie was very clear. `This is the biggest thing any of you will ever do in your career’, he said. ‘So let’s get it right’,’’ reported a source who was present.
Davis returned to London to vote on a Private Members’ Bill in the House of Commons, which provided a reminder of the government’s precarious majority. Labour has promised to double the number of such bills during the current term of parliament.
The Brexit talks will this week centre on the three major issues: EU citizens’ rights, the border with Ireland, and the so-called Brexit Bill.
Barnier has said ‘‘sufficient progress’’ must be made on these three issues in order to progress on to talks over trade and the future EU-UK relationship.
Sources on the UK side expect the most difficult of these to be money, with British negotiators refusing to discuss what Britain might pay until the European side explains the legal rationale for demands that the UK side considers outlandish.
Across town, meanwhile, Boris Johnson was attending a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign and Brexit minister, who met Johnson in Brussels, said solving the Irish border issue would not be straightforward, adding that the UK was not being realistic about what it wanted from a postBrexit trading relationship.
‘‘We cannot and we will not accept a situation where we have a re-emergence of a hard border on the island of Ireland,’’ Coveney said.
– Telegraph Group, The Times