UK officials to discuss post-Brexit ties at EU

BRUSSELS: British officials arrive here today to push the EU towards talks about their post-Brexit ties, which the bloc refuses to do without an agreement first on London’s exit bill and other divorce issues.

A third round of talks takes place more than a year after Britons voted in a referendum to leave the European Union.

Chief Brexit negotiators, the EU’s Michel Barnier and Britain’s David Davis, will meet before more talks tomor- row and Wednesday convene on expatriate rights and “other separation issues”.

Senior officials will also tackle the conundrum of the future border between EU state Ireland and the UK’s Northern Ireland tomorrow.

Britain will present several papers on issues ranging from customs arrangements to data sharing. They have often ventured out into the future relationship between London and what will become a 27-state EU.

Britain will be urging the bloc to show “imagination” and focus discussion on these future ties rather than just on the divorce settlement.

Yesterday, the opposition Labour Party said it would keep Britain in the European single market and customs union for a transitional period after Brexit, offering a clear alternative to the policies of Prime Minister Theresa May.

The bloc wants to settle chief separation aspects first and has already signalled the slow progress so far means jumpstarting talks about a new accord with Britain is now less likely in October.

“Both the UK and the EU have an interest to move forward quickly in negotiations and that requires us to make sufficient progress on citizens’ rights, on the financial settlement on Ireland,” an EU official said. “The divorce issues should be relatively straightforward to sort out. So it is not a matter of time needed in terms of technical complexity, it is a matter of political will.”

The Irish issue is fraught with economic consequences and politically complex.

Sides expect no major leaps forward this week in the talks aimed at unravelling more than 40 years of union. But both highlight that time is scarce as the negotiations should conclude well before the provisional Brexit date of March 2019. – Reuters