MAY’S VICTORY OVER BRUSSELS BULLIES
THERESA May’s push for a Brexit deal was boosted yesterday when the EU dropped demands for sweeping powers to punish Britain.
Brussels sources said a clause giving the European Commission the ability to block the UK’s access to the single market had been scrubbed from a draft agreement covering the planned Brexit transition period which could last up to two years.
The humiliating climbdown followed fears among EU leaders that the Prime Minister would walk out of departure negotiations and cancel the promised £39billion divorce fee from British taxpayers.
Eurosceptics last night welcomed the retreat by Brussels.
Tory MP Peter Bone said: “This was a stupid thing to propose, and it does tell us what some European bureaucrats were thinking. Fortunately, wiser heads are beginning to prevail in the EU at last.”
He added: “The fact is we are leaving the EU. Britain has the fifth biggest economy in the world. Did anyone ever seriously believe the EU was going to be punishing us in this way?”
A statement from Change Britain, a pressure group set up by supporters of the Leave campaign after the referendum, said it was “right that the ‘punishment clause’ is removed from the transition agreement”.
The group urged Mrs May to go further by rejecting an EU attempt to stop the Government being free to negotiate new trade deals with other countries during the Brexit transition period.
A furious row between London and Brussels erupted after the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier included the punishment clause in a negotiating document last week.
Under the proposals the European Commission would have been able to “suspend certain benefits” of the internal market for the UK without going through the lengthy European Court of Justice legal process.
They were included to give the commission fast-track powers to penalise the UK for any alleged breaches of EU rules during the transition period, which is now expected to last from the official Brexit date on March 29, 2019, until December 31, 2020.
EU Exit Secretary David Davis had savaged the demands as “discourteous” and “unwise” after they emerged.
He accused the commission of failing to negotiate in good faith, adding, the document was “frankly discourteous language” and actually implying that they could arbitrarily terminate in effect the implementation period.
It later emerged that the proposals had triggered concern among many leaders of the 27 nations in the EU that the commission was being far too aggressive in the Brexit negotiations.
A number of European diplomats were reported to have warned that the talks could collapse as a result of the demands, leaving the EU facing a cash crisis.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s spokesman also intervened earlier this week to warn that the EU should not be permitted to “humiliate” Britain. Elysee Palace official Benjamin Griveaux said there was “no question of punishing anyone with regards to Brexit”. He added: “That’s the worst thing that could happen.”
Following the row EU officials are understood to have redrafted the agreement to remove the clause.
New text was added saying that officials will be obliged to investigate any alleged breaches of EU laws in line with the bloc’s procedures.
The climbdown came after indications that Mrs May has dropped a demand for the period of adjustment to last for a full two years.
Whitehall sources said the Prime Minister was willing to accept Mr Barnier’s insistence that the transition is ended by 2021.
But amid the signs of compromise over the transition period, one EU official appeared to risk inflaming tensions by claiming that British taxpayers will end up paying far more to Brussels in a Brexit divorce fee than the £39billion agreed last year.
The unidentified bureaucrat boasted that the final total could hit £90billion.
Negotiators performed “maths acrobatics” to cover up the true sum in an attempt to protect the Prime Minister from a backlash by Eurosceptic Tories.
Government officials have rubbished the claims, insisting the figure still stands at around £39billion. The climbdown yesterday came ahead of Mrs May’s talks with Angela Merkel in Berlin today.
It will be their first meeting since it was revealed that the German Chancellor had mocked the Prime Minister’s negotiating tactics in a private meeting with journalists.
Mrs Merkel claimed that Mrs May responded to a series of questions about what the Government was seeking from the Brexit negotiations by repeatedly saying: “Make me an offer.”