Tag: Brussels

It seems like no time ago that the DUP’s Sammy Wilson was loudly advising the British that “the blackmailing burghers from Brussels” and the “cheap political opportunists” from Dublin must be met with a “tough” response during the Brexit negotiations. Ian Paisley jnr likewise told the then Brexit minister that what was needed was to shout “No surrender” at the EU. The prime minister had bought its 10 parliamentary votes and, in defiance of her responsibilities to the Belfast Agreement, was acting as if the DUP was the one-party government of Northern Ireland. The timid have left you; your Lundys have betrayed you; but you have closed your gates.” He was referring, of course, to the siege of Derry in 1689, when the Protestant apprentice boys shut the gates of the walled city against the Catholic forces of King James. DUP leader Arlene Foster insisted that whatever else about Brexit, there must be “no border down the Irish Sea”. That, she said, was her party’s red line. Its British allies are the worst of the Brexit fanatics. He also claimed that this was “all about a punishment beating for the UK because they dared to leave the EU” and that the prime minister had permitted this. The party knew and had been told over and over that the Belfast Agreement made it inevitable that the backstop preventing a hard border would be included in any deal. All that matters is the old game of betrayal and defiance, the pathetic sectarian politics of “No surrender!”

Five Eurosceptic cabinet ministers are pressing Theresa May to make last-minute changes to her controversial Brexit deal. Having opted to remain in the government, Michael Gove will work with other Brexit-backing cabinet ministers to urge the prime minister to seek to go back to Brussels and renegotiate, in particular over the Irish backstop, Whitehall sources say. No-confidence proceedings Forty-eight Conservative MPs would need to back a no-confidence vote in Theresa May to trigger a leadership contest, according to party rules. There are two ways a contest can be triggered, most obviously if the leader of the party resigns. If they do not, 15% of Conservative MPs must write to the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories. Unlike Labour party rules, under which candidates go to a ballot of members as long as they have the support of 15% of the party’s MPs, Conservative candidates are whittled down to a final two before party members have their say. Under Conservative party rules, 48 Conservative MPs must write letters to trigger a confidence vote. The group of five ministers are reportedly hoping that by changing the most controversial details of the withdrawal agreement, May could avoid both a vote of no confidence and a defeat in parliament. Under the current arrangement, the UK would not be able to leave the Irish backstop without the EU’s consent. “This idea that now after two years of negotiation, somehow four or five cabinet ministers can negotiate a different outcome and agree it themselves, and then expect the EU to just sign up to that, I just think it’s not living in the real world,” Coveney told a podcast recorded by the Irish Times at his Fine Gael party’s annual conference.

Diplomats from the 27 EU countries must now pore over 585 pages of the draft Brexit withdrawal agreement with lawyers to ensure all will be to each government's liking. A brief guide to where we are with Brexit But all this could be in vain if the Brexit deal is voted down by the UK parliament in a few weeks' time. I put the question to Michel Barnier on Wednesday night at his press conference - but, skilled politician that he is, he refused to engage. Brussels is very keen indeed not to give the impression that the EU might change or come up with a "better" Brexit deal text if this one ends up being rejected in the House of Commons. Mr Barnier quoted Theresa May as saying that this is a deal in the UK's interest. In fact, he spoke so warmly about the deal - how hard EU and UK negotiators had worked on it, how successful they had been in protecting citizens' rights, the Irish border and the constitutional integrity of the UK - that one colleague commented to me it was as if Mr Barnier, known for his suave French manner, believed they had managed to conjure an exquisitely designed Faberge egg out of the complex Brexit process. He is off to Strasbourg on Thursday to schmooze the European parliament - which has a veto over the Brexit deal. But Mr Barnier has been careful to keep the parliament in the loop on negotiations throughout, so they're unlikely to reject a final agreement. Well, about 100 pages of the draft withdrawal treaty are dedicated to these extra ties - on state aid, environment and labour regulations - ensuring that UK business should not have a competitive advantage over EU ones in a customs partnership. This led one EU civil servant late on Wednesday night to jab at the 585 pages of the draft Brexit treaty, muttering: "You know what?

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Vince Cable, urged Michel Barnier to stop talking up a no-deal Brexit and instead make contingency plans for a second referendum after the EU’s chief negotiator admitted that a parliamentary impasse in the UK was standing in the way of a deal. Cable said the government and Brussels had up until now been emphasising the danger of the UK crashing out in order to sell a “bad deal” to parliament. But the former business secretary told Barnier during a meeting in Brussels that the so-called people’s vote was gathering support across the political spectrum, and the European commission needed to ready itself for the eventuality. “It’s very clear really: it is a British problem rather than one on the European side.” But Cable, who was meeting the EU official with the leader of the SNP in Westminster, Ian Blackford, and representatives of Plaid Cymru and the Greens, said the message to Barnier was that there was no way out of the logjam, and that the strength of support for a second referendum was growing daily. Cable said: “My main message was that a people’s vote is a very live political option. He obviously had an very clear understanding of what was happening in the UK.” A joint statement from the British politicians attending the meeting said: “With sensible politicians from all parties uniting, we pointed out to Mr Barnier that there is a genuine cross-party consensus that our exit from the European Union must not be assumed.” The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, said on Thursday that the moment was coming where businesses would have to assume there would be no deal. He said: “If this lack of a solution continues, and approaches the end date, the private sector itself will have to prepare on the assumption that it will be a hard Brexit. We know that the British government has been preparing because that has been reported, and when I asked Theresa May she declined the opportunity to deny it. I want to hear what the commission is doing.” Cable said he did not believe attempts by Tory whips to convince Labour MPs to support a deal or else face a no-deal Brexit would work. “We have a 100 MPs, including 40 Labour MPs and eight Tories, now in support of a people’s vote and it is like an iceberg.

In current plans, the backstop, under which the whole of the UK would stay in a customs union while Northern Ireland alone effectively stayed in the single market, would be enacted in December 2020 if a bespoke technological solution or trade deal could not be reached by then. Foster has insisted she will not accept any Brexit deal under which Northern Ireland is treated differently to the rest of the UK. There was alarm about the language used by Downing Street on Friday that Theresa May “would never agree to a deal that would trap the UK in a backstop permanently”. The plan to include an extension clause in the withdrawal agreement would be a way to assuage concerns. A senior EU diplomat said that the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, could arrive at the European commission on Monday, should a deal be agreed during intensive talks over the weekend. “Mr Raab has stated he might come to Brussels on Monday,” the diplomat said. The negotiating teams are back in their offices today discussing outcome of talks over the last few days.” May asked in September last year for a transition period, which she optimistically described in her Florence speech at the time as a period of implementation of aspects of the future trade deal, including migration controls. The prime minister’s spokeswoman said on Friday: “When we published our plans in June on a UK-wide customs backstop, we were absolutely clear that the arrangement would be temporary, and only in place until our future economic relationship is ready.” Mujtaba Rahman, a former Treasury and European commission official, and now head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, said an extra six months would be needed if only for a trade deal to be negotiated and ratified by all the member states’ parliaments. “The UK has no choice but to ask for a mechanism to extend the transition, not least to further mollify the DUP,” Rahman said. “But doing so is also a recognition of reality: both the UK and the EU’s political leadership will change next year, meaning substantive trade negotiations are unlikely to begin until September 2019 at the earliest.” Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group, said extending the transition “would not necessarily make the backstop redundant and would be very expensive” because of the expected additional contributions to the EU budget.

Aa Aa From poverty and hunger to the environment and peace, Bono is certainly no stranger to saving the world. But now the U2 frontman has a new cause: Saving Europe. Today, Bono was in Brussels to meet the President of the European Parliament. And while Africa development may have been the official reason, the future of Europe quickly dominated the discussion. Bono is just one of several stars to get political this week. In the UK on Brexit, Sir Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame said this week he will pay for people who want to attend the People’s Vote March in London. In the US, pop star Taylor Swift broke her long silence on politics by endorsing the Democrats, while rapper Kanye West will lunch at the White House with Donald Trump tomorrow. Tesa and Darren discuss celebrity forays into politics with Eszter Zalan, a reporter from EUobserver and British MEP with the Socialists and Democrats Catherine Stihler.

She told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show her plan for post-Brexit trade with the EU was not dead, despite it having been rejected by EU leaders. And she urged the Tory party - in Birmingham for their annual conference - to "come together" and back it. Boris Johnson has called her so-called Chequers plan "deranged". Davidson calls for Tory Brexit 'silence' European Research Group Tories won't back PM's plan The Brexit factions reshaping UK politics At-a-glance: Chequers plan Mr Johnson also set out domestic policy ideas, including building a bridge between Britain and Ireland and putting the HS2 scheme on hold to focus on a rail link in northern England. She said: "I do believe in Brexit. "That's why I want us to get a really good free trade deal with the European Union, which is what lies at the heart of the Chequers plan." The Labour Party has said it will back Mrs May in Parliament if she agrees to their plan for a customs union with the EU and a Brexit deal that guarantees workers' rights and protects jobs. Later on Sunday, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt hit back at the EU's negotiation stance in his speech to the party conference. On the Andrew Marr Show, Mrs May also defended the "hostile environment" immigration policies she introduced as home secretary, which led to people from the so-called Windrush generation losing their jobs, welfare benefits and right to remain in the UK. Mrs May wants to use the Conservative conference to focus on domestic issues as well as Brexit, after Labour unveiled a string of new policies at its conference last week.

The Irish government has urged Theresa May to put forward new proposals on the Ireland border question in writing to Brussels before the Conservative party conference in order to head off a collapse in Brexit negotiations. McEntee said May was vague and had hinted that she could not deliver a British alternative to the EU’s proposal for the Irish backstop in time for the October summit. “She didn’t exactly give a timeline, I’ll be very honest,“ McEntee told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland – referring to when May would deliver on a legal text for the Irish border backstop, which Brussels has been looking for since the joint agreement in December to ensure no hard border between Northern Ireland and the republic. “She said it would be forthcoming. Obviously we know that the [Tory party] conference is coming up in a week and a half but the October summit is on very shortly after that so if you do the maths, it doesn’t give us very much time,” she added. Don’t buy the Brexit hype: it’s a border in the Irish Sea or the customs union | Jonathan Lis Read more “So what we have asked is that they give this information, that it’s in written form, that it’s a legal document, because the backstop has to be a legal document and that they give it to the taskforce as quickly as possible, they are the experts on customs, experts in understanding and identifying if this could work whatever this proposal is. “We need to get away from the idea of anyone trying to create a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. That’s not the EU’s objective.” He also hinted at a long-rumoured “backstop to a backstop” offering London a political declaration as detailed as possible on post-Brexit ties, which would allow a clear, legally binding backstop in the withdrawal agreement but a strongly worded pledge in the future relationship document to ensure there was no regulatory differences between Northern Ireland and Britain. “They showed willing and she showed nothing. On Thursday, the former Brexit secretary, David Davis, told the BBC the new proposals were a softening of the position of the EU, which he felt was coming closer to the position of the European Research Group of eurosceptic MPs, which has insisted the border could remain invisible with the help of technology.

Ignoring the nuance that the European Parliament is, in fact, directly elected, he tried to reduce the importance of the vote, claiming that only "politicians of the past" voted against him, and the "pro-migration elites" are attacking him because they want to flood Hungary with migrants. Is this political game enough for him to win the European Parliament elections domestically? While Orban is increasingly open about his ambitions to become a serious European politician, there are five reasons why it seems it will be way more difficult than he thinks. The political forces that are supportive towards him now represent less than a third of the European Parliament. Second, immigration and the refugee crisis are not the only concerns of Europeans - as he assumes. Even Italy's Matteo Salvini is more diplomatic when it comes to this issue. Viktor Orban talks about defending Europe's borders, about protection in the countries of origin and investment in Africa, and I agree with him. An important takeaway of the European parliament vote was that Orban has many more supporters in central and eastern Europe, even from ideologically distant players (eg Czech communist and Slovakian socialists), than from western Europe. While he has popular supporters in big west European countries such as Italy (Salvini), France (Marine Le Pen) and Netherlands (Geert Wilders), it seems that in central and eastern Europe his message resonates better, and solidarity works more. While Orban looks for the upcoming European parliament election in May 2019 as a revolution that is coming, he will be dissatisfied with the results.

Senior Conservatives denounced the former foreign secretary for comparing the prime minister's Chequers plan to having "wrapped a suicide vest" around Britain and handed the detonator to Brussels. Elsewhere, Jeremy Corbyn faced an angry meeting of his parliamentary party, where the Labour leader was expected to endure recriminations over the party's antisemitism row. He said at least 80 Tory MPs could vote against the plan. I think that it is absolutely right that the cabinet and the parliamentary party backs the prime minister. We have Leave MPs in the Labour Party like we have Remain MPs in the Conservative Party. She rejected suggestions she would quit if Boris Johnson became leader, adding: "I have been in the Conservative Party for the best part of 30 years. He also praised Donald Trump, saying: "The United States currently boasts economic growth rates far in excess of this country, at about 4.5 per cent, and with record low unemployment - and that growth is being driven not just by the US government's decision to cut taxes and regulation, but perhaps even more by psychology: by the sense that the government wants to cut taxes, wants to liberate and energise people. “I understand the argument for a so-called ‘people’s vote’ on the deal, on the deal – not on leaving the EU. She said: "In my party, we regard ourselves as the party for women, yet in 100 years we have never had a woman leader, it appears only men are able to rule the Labour Party. "I now think that was a mistake, because its not about proving we're tough, attacks on women MPs are not just misogyny, they're anti-democratic, if a woman is elected, she is entitled to get on with her job.