ZCZC
BFF-09
FRANCE-BRITAIN-EU-BREXIT-DIPLOMACY
Brexit on menu at May, Macron dinner
PARIS, Aug 3, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – British Prime Minister Theresa May heads to
President Emmanuel Macron’s “summer Elysee Palace” on the Mediterranean coast
on Friday, seeking to soften resistance to a Brexit plan which has upended
her government while failing to win over sceptical EU negotiators.
She and Macron will hold an “informal” two-hour meeting at Bregancon, a
17th-century fort long favoured by French presidents as a summer retreat.
“The plan was to go to Bregancon, which is to be a summer residence but
also a place for working, and since May was finishing her vacation in Italy
we proposed hosting her here,” a source said.
May is going to lay out “London’s position on the Brexit talks and its
future relations with the EU,” the source said. “It will be the occasion to
clarify this proposal and discuss the political context.”
There will be no press statement afterwards, because “there is absolutely
no intention to speak in place of Michel Barnier,” the EU’s designated Brexit
negotiator, the source added.
Pressure is growing on May to win allies on the continent after her
“Chequers plan” prompted two top ministers to resign in protest last month.
The prime minister has just a few months before an agreement on Britain’s
divorce from the EU — set for March 29, 2019 — must be forged in principle
ahead of a European summit in mid-October.
Barnier has already shot down May’s proposed solution to keeping the border
between the UK and EU member Ireland open without a “hard border”.
Under May’s proposal a dual system of taxation would be introduced which
would see taxes levied by each side of the Irish border for the benefit of
the other.
– Flexibility? –
European leaders have steadfastly voiced support for Barnier, who wrote in
a piece published in French and German newspapers Thursday that Britain and
the EU “are 80 percent in agreement on an exit deal.”
“But 80 percent is not 100 percent,” he warned. “Let’s be frank, the United
Kingdom, having decided to leave the single market, cannot be as economically
close as the rest of the EU.”
France is seen as taking a particularly hard line in the Brexit
negotiations, especially on financial services, with Paris already expecting
to get about 3,500 new banking jobs as leading players move operations out of
London.
Companies in other sectors have also warned they might move operations out
of Britain, which could prove a boon for economies on the continent.
Barnier has maintained that any Brexit accord “must conform with the
economic interests of the 27 remaining EU members, and the president has
always supported this as well”, the source in Macron’s office said.
But Macron also wants to avoid a “messy divorce”, which Britain’s foreign
minister Jeremy Hunt has warned will happen in case of a “no-deal exit”.
“France and Germany have to send a strong signal to the Commission that we
need to negotiate a pragmatic and sensible outcome that protects jobs on both
sides of the Channel,” Hunt said in a British press interview before visiting
Paris and Vienna this week.
The British charm offensive continued Thursday, when Brexit minister
Dominic Raab said he held “constructive” talks with France’s Europe Minister
Nathalie Loiseau in Paris, saying they had discussed “the progress of
negotiations with Michel Barnier.”
BSS/AFP/MRI/0825 hrs