May’s last-ditch trip to Brussels to break deadlock
THERESA May will travel to Brussels today in a last-ditch bid to break the Brexit deadlock ahead of a key summit this week.
Government sources last night said the Prime Minister and Brexit Secretary David Davis would travel to the Belgian capital with the aim of reviving talks that have stalled over EU demands for a divorce payment of up to £90 billion.
They are expected to hold separate talks with the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier and European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker.
Yesterday, Mrs May made a personal appeal to German Chancellor Angela Merkel to intervene and help break the deadlock.
She has also spoken to EU Council President Donald Tusk and Dutch PM Mark Rutte in recent days and is expected to discuss Brexit with other leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, in the next 72 hours.
The moves come ahead of a crunch EU summit in Brussels on Thursday when leaders will assess the state of play on the Brexit talks.
Draft conclusions for this week’s summit suggest the EU is thinking of adopting a more conciliatory tone in response to Mrs May’s Florence speech, in which she offered to hand over at least £20 billion to plug a hole in the EU budget after the UK leaves. But Berlin and Paris are thought to be pushing for references to the start of trade talks to be watered down.
Mr Juncker has also made it clear he expects the UK to pay much more.
in an extraordinary intervention last week, he said Europe was grateful for Britain’s help in the war but would not accept the UK leaving without handing over a massive sum. He added: ‘ They must pay. They must pay.’ Mr Barnier concluded the fifth round of Brexit talks with Mr Davis last week with a gloomy assessment that talks were ‘deadlocked’. He said there had been a ‘disturbing’ lack of progress on the divorce bill. Mrs May yesterday telephoned the German Chancellor to urge her to drop her opposition to agreeing to start trade talks at this week’s sum- mit. Berlin, the largest contributor to the EU budget, is believed to be acting as a major roadblock by demanding the UK commit in writing to pay a divorce bill running into tens of billions of pounds before talks can turn to trade.
A Downing Street spokesman last night said the Prime Minister and Mrs Merkel had agreed on ‘the importance of continued constructive progress in the UK’s exit negotiations’.
Mrs May is under pressure from Eurosceptics to pull the plug on Brexit negotiations if the EU refuses to countenance a move to trade talks by the end of the year.
Former Brexit minister David Jones yesterday said the time was fast approaching to abandon the talks.
Government sources admit there is little hope of EU leaders declaring ‘sufficient progress’ has been made in divorce proceedings to move on to trade. Senior figures are privately hopeful that trade talks will begin by Christmas, but they are desperate for progress this week to maintain momentum and demonstrate the negotiations are not failing.
Downing Street denied today’s trip showed the talks were in crisis, saying it had been in the diary for ‘weeks’.