Tag: Sabine Weyand

May's Brussels trip only start of 'endless' EU trade talks Read more Both sides are racing to complete the negotiations in time for Sunday’s EU summit, where the Brexit deal is due to be agreed between the UK and the 27 countries remaining in the EU, although May will then have to push the deal through parliament at a time when dozens of Tories have said they cannot support it. Cabinet discussed the political declaration at a two-and-a-half-hour meeting which overran because so many people wanted to speak, although sources said the meeting was “relatively calm” by recent standards. Senior ministers were particularly keen to find ways to sell the deal to Conservative colleagues. The EU’s deputy chef negotiator, Sabine Weyand, told ambassadors for the member states on Tuesday evening that negotiations on the political declaration had stalled on the issues of Gibraltar, the demands from European fishermen for access to British waters, and the UK’s hopes to link the language on the trade in goods to the Chequers proposals and “frictionless trade”. Earlier on Tuesday, Rees-Mogg was forced to deny that his attempt to remove May had ended in a humiliating failure, even though only 26 MPs had publicly said they had submitted a letter demanding a vote of no confidence in her leadership, well short of the 48 required. “We will see what letters come in due time. Asked whether it might prove tricky to oust May in a full confidence vote given that the group was struggling to secure 48 names, he said few of his colleagues wanted the prime minister to continue to lead the party into an election due in 2022. Overnight, critics of the prime minister did little to hide their frustration that a confidence vote had not yet been triggered. Eurosceptic MPs insisted that more letters had been submitted privately and Baker, a former Brexit minister and ERG member, suggested that MPs who had failed to deliver on promises. DUP refuses to support May's Brexit deal for second day in row Read more Rees-Mogg insisted he had not predicted that the contest would be triggered this week and suggested more colleagues would follow if the prime minister lost the vote on her Brexit deal in parliament.

The European council president, Donald Tusk, told May last month that he needed to see “maximum progress” by this week’s European council meeting of leaders on the issue of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. A Brexit summit to finalise the terms of the political declaration on a future trade relationship has been pencilled in for the weekend of 17-18 November, in the event the negotiating teams find a compromise position on avoiding a hard border. EU sources said they had expected the summit to be a sombre ceremonial event. In response to concerns over May’s ability to hold her government together and push through a deal, however, the EU is now planning an alternative use for the November summit should it be required. The bloc’s deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, had told EU ambassadors gathering in Luxembourg on Friday that talks were progressing well, and that results might be made public as early as Monday. A leaked EU planning document, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, noted: “Deal made, nothing made public (in theory).” May’s volatile domestic situation remains the greatest risk to a deal. A senior EU diplomat said: “Preparations on contingency are really advancing in almost all member states. We’re going to do this anyhow whatever the outcome because even if there’s a positive outcome [this week] we’ll still need to continue preparedness and contingency because we can never exclude the possibility that negotiations will break down at a later stage”, the same source said. The EU has proposed that if a trade deal or bespoke technological solution was not at hand by the end of the transition period, Northern Ireland would in effect stay in the single market and customs union as the rest of the UK withdraws. She is instead proposing a temporary EU-UK customs union, and for Northern Ireland to stay in the single market, should that be agreed at a later date by Stormont.

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.