Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
European Commission makes demands as Britain seeks Brexit deal
BRUSSELS — Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, who came to Brussels on Wednesday evening hoping to improve her chances of winning parliamentary approval for her plan for withdrawal from the European Union, is discovering once again that other nations of the bloc have domestic politics, too.
Her meeting with the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, was intended to push the British view on the last bit of unfinished business: a nonbinding political declaration setting out the principles for Britain’s relationship with the European Union after the departure, a process known as Brexit.
May will want to be seen at home to be battling Brussels to get the best future
arrangement for Britain while trying to beat back the concerns of other member states, in particular France, Spain and some of the Scandinavian countries. May wants to add detailed language to the political declaration about a future of “frictionless trade” with the bloc and a currently nonexistent technological fix to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and Ireland, which will remain in the European Union. But other countries are piling in with their own demands, many of them aimed at their own domestic constituencies, diplomats said. The political declaration, which is still being negotiated, has stretched from the original seven pages to more than 20, according to diplomats. France has been especially strong in demanding better guarantees for a “level playing field” for economic competition with Britain once it leaves the bloc, but remains in a form of customs union for goods. The French have also pressed for assurances on fishing quotas, a major concern as well for Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. The discussions between France and Germany have become intense with Germany wanting the deal done by Friday and France wanting to prolong the debate into Sunday. Spain, with its prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, ruling in a minority government, has responded to domestic criticism by insisting that it will oppose a Brexit deal unless there are guarantees that the future of Gibraltar, a British colony claimed by Spain, is left out of the agreement. His concern is that the colony’s future remains a bilateral issue. Spain is likely to get some sort of guarantee clarifying the point. Future fishing quotas are so complicated that they were left out of the withdrawal agreement, postponed to the ensuing, post-Brexit negotiations on the details of a future relationship. But the issue is important to all countries concerned, with even the British fishing industry divided between those who live on exports to the European Union and those who sell domestically. Both Britons and Europeans are upset that if a separate deal on fish is not done by July 2020, during the transition period the European fishing industry will lose access to British waters while Britain’s will lose access to European markets. There are other concerns, noted Charles Grant, the director of the Center for European Reform, a research institution. Some countries known for their pragmatism, like the Dutch, the Swedes and the Baltic countries, are working on legislation to cover important trading issues with Britain in the case of a no-deal Brexit. But the European Commission wants them to refrain from doing so now, to keep pressure on Britain to complete and ratify the withdrawal agreement rather than “work to help the British mitigate with minideals in advance of a possible no-deal,” Grant said. The European Central Bank is also discouraging countries from doing deals in advance on financial services. The political declaration has to be approved alongside the binding withdrawal agreement, a nearly 600-page text of lawyerly clauses, which May insists cannot now be altered. Both documents are required under the European Union treaty’s Article 50, which governs a country’s exit from the bloc. The other European member states plan to approve both documents in a special summit in Brussels on Sunday, and European officials hope that the texts will be finished by Friday to ensure a quick approval. But as ever in the European Union, deadlines can tend to slip. Once agreed to by the bloc, it is then up to May to get the documents approved by the British Parliament, which is looking to be an extremely difficult task. Then they will receive final approval, with little fuss expected, from the European Parliament, so that Britain can exit in an orderly fashion March 29. European Union diplomats and officials emphasize that they do not want to do anything to make the embattled May’s task harder. So they are trying not to fuel further bickering in her divided Conservative Party or within Parliament, where the withdrawal deal is already sharply criticized and her majority is threatened.