EU stands united as Brexit deliberations near

BRUSSELS — European Union leaders listed demands that British Prime Minister Theresa May must satisfy before they will discuss the trade deal she wants, and urged her to be more realistic in her expectations.

Any doubts about the scale of the task facing the U.K. in withdrawing from the EU after four decades were laid to rest at a Brussels summit of the region’s leaders Saturday. A tough negotiating stance was endorsed unanimously, within minutes and to applause. Britain responded by saying it expects a confrontation.

The complexity comes down to the fact that a departure from the world’s biggest trading bloc has never been done before and was never supposed to happen. The EU is striving to ensure that Britain. is worse off outside it than inside, not least to avoid setting a precedent. After agreeing to the terms of separation, then it’s a matter of getting down to the business of what a future relationship might look like.

“Nobody has united here against the U.K.,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said as she left the meeting. “The British people have made a decision, which we will have to respect. But we remaining 27 now get together in order to speak with one voice.”

The Brexit discussions will begin soon after Britain’s June election, which May called in an attempt to strengthen her mandate going into the Brexit talks. The first orders of business will be guaranteeing the rights of citizens and calculating a financial settlement that one leader said would be at least $44 billion. Only once “sufficient progress” is made on those topics will the EU’s attention turn to trade. That looks unlikely to happen before December.

Seeking to present unity in contrast to what they perceive to be muddled thinking and unrealistic ambitions on the British side, Merkel and her fellow leaders entered the European Council’s headquarters in Brussels declaring that they stood as one. The message to Britain is that it’s they, not London, in control of what Brexit will look like.

“The U.K. is being confronted with reality now,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who estimated that the bill for leaving would be between 44 billion and 65 billion euros, in an interview. The British “can’t get any more favors than a nation that isn’t in the EU,” he said. “The fact remains that it was their decision to leave the EU.”

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker suggested that the British government might not actually know that. He recalled that when he dined with May last Wednesday he detected a feeling that Britain’s future deal with the EU could still be discussed in parallel with arranging the divorce.

Responding to the summit’s decisions, British Brexit Secretary David Davis acknowledged that the talks would be complex and likely confrontational. As May has repeatedly done, he used the EU’s stance to argue that voters should back their Conservative Party in the June 8 election, rather than the opposition Labour Party.

“Both sides are clear — we want these negotiations to be conducted in the spirit of goodwill, sincere cooperation and with the aim of establishing a close partnership between the U.K. and the EU going forward,” Davis said. “There are already people in Europe who oppose these aims and people at home trying to undermine them.”