New EC leader backs Brexit extension
First female leader of European Commission says Withdrawal Agreement is not open to renegotiation
Ursula von der Leyen, who was confirmed as the president of the European Commission yesterday in Strasbourg, said she would support a Brexit extension – but warned the Withdrawal Agreement would not be renegotiated. The election of Mrs von der Leyen came as Boris Johnson significantly hardened his Brexit demands by rejecting as insufficient either a time limit or a unilateral exit mechanism to the Irish backstop.
URSULA confirmed of the European VON as the DER Commission first LEYEN, woman yesterday president who was in Strasbourg, said she would support a Brexit extension but warned the Withdrawal Agreement would not be renegotiated.
The election of Mrs von der Leyen by the European Parliament came as Boris Johnson sent tremors through Westminster by significantly hardening his Brexit demands by rejecting either a time-limit or a unilateral exit mechanism to the Irish backstop as insufficient to satisfy MPS.
Mr Johnson’s apparent rejection of either compromise was seen as significant, as these were the two concessions that prominent Brexiteers had demanded earlier this year as the price of their support for Mrs May’s deal.
Mr Johnson has insisted Britain must leave, with or without a deal, on the Oct 31 Brexit deadline.
Mrs von der Leyen, 60, said that guaranteeing “peace and stability on the island of Ireland” and citizens’ rights were her Brexit priorities, echoing the EU’S long-held insistence that the divorce treaty would never be renegotiated. Mrs von der Leyen, who will lead the commission for the next five years after taking office the day after the Brexit deadline on Nov 1, said: “The Withdrawal Agreement concluded with the Government of the United Kingdom provides certainty where Brexit created uncertainty.
“However, I stand ready for a further extension of the withdrawal date, should more time be required for a good reason,” the former German defence minister said, to catcalls from Brexit Party MEPS in the chamber.
Privately some senior EU diplomats have not dismissed reopening the deal if they turned the key on an orderly divorce deal with Irish government consent. In Brussels, EU officials and diplomats said they were reserving judgment but are now increasingly braced for a ‘‘no deal’’ on the Hallowe’en deadline.
“Boris Johnson has been many things to many people so let’s wait and see,” said one EU diplomat close to the Brexit process, “but this isn’t promising at all.”
A meeting between Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, and Michel Barnier last week ended in deep divisions after the Brexit Secretary told the EU’S chief negotiator the Withdrawal Agreement was dead five times and that the backstop must be scrapped.
In Strasbourg, Nigel Farage, the Brexit Party leader, accused Mrs von der Leyen of wanting to build “a centralised, undemocratic, updated form of communism where nation state parliaments will cease to have any relevance at all.”
“I think we can probably do without what you have to say here,” Mrs von der Leyen, a mother of seven, told Mr Farage before declaring that the challenges of the modern world were so large no country could face them alone.
After her tight victory, she was asked if she would rather deal with Mr Johnson or his rival Jeremy Hunt. “I don’t know either of them personally,” she told reporters, “I will work in a very constructive way with every head of state and government.”
The European Parliament backed Mrs von der Leyen’s candidacy, despite MEPS being furious that EU leaders had nominated her after three summits and marathon negotiations, rather than any of the lead candidates who ran for the post in the European elections.
She narrowly secured the majority vote in the parliament by nine votes – 383 MEPS voted for her, 327 against, while 22 abstained and one vote was void. Martin Selmayr, the controversial German secretary general of the commission, announced he would resign in accordance with Brussels tradition that dictates no two people of the same nationality can hold the EU executive’s most powerful posts.
Annegret Kramp-karrenbauer is to be Germany’s new defense minister, officials have confirmed. Kramp-karrenbauer, also known by her initials AKK, succeeded Chancellor Angela Merkel as leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in December.