06 December 2016

The Guardian: UK will have less than 18 months to reach deal, says Commission's Brexit chief negotiator

In remarks that seemed to surprise London, Michel Barnier said the EU would need time to define its stance at the start of the two-year exit process, and the European parliament, EU-27 and UK government several months to ratify it at the end.

Adding to the pressure on the government as Theresa May accepted a Labour demand that the government publish its plan for Brexit before triggering article 50, Barnier also said it was “difficult to imagine” an interim deal bridging Britain’s departure from the bloc and any future trade agreement.

“Time will be very short,” the former finance commissioner stressed in his first press conference since taking up the post in October. “It’s clear that the period of actual negotiations will be shorter than two years. All in all, there will be less than 18 months to negotiate.”

Barnier, who has visited 18 EU countries in recent weeks to hammer out a common position on Brexit and aims to hold talks in all 27 remaining members by the end of January, said the EU would base its approach on four key principles.

It would seek first to preserve the unity and interests of its 27 remaining members, he said, and refuse all negotiation before notification. Brexit must be an inferior deal for Britain than EU membership, and curbs on free movement were not compatible with full access to the single market.

“Being in the EU comes with rights and benefits – third countries can never have the same rights and benefits,” he said in Brussels. “The single market and its four freedoms are indivisible. Cherry picking is not an option.”

Barnier said that if the UK triggered article 50 by the end of March, as Theresa May has said she would, formal negotiations on Britain’s departure from the EU could start “a few weeks later”, but agreement would need to be reached by October 2018 to allow time for ratification.

His substantive remarks on the EU’s position came in contrast to comments on Tuesday from May. Amid all the terms – hard, soft, black, white, grey – coined for variations of Brexit, the prime minister said on a visit to Bahrain that “what Britain was actually looking for is a red, white and blue Brexit”.

“That is the right deal for the United Kingdom, what is going to be the right relationship for the UK with the European Union once we’ve left,” May said, without elaborating on what she meant. “That’s what we’re about, that’s what we’ll be working on.”

The continuing opacity of the UK’s Brexit strategy has led to mounting recent frustration in European capitals. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, called bluntly on Tuesday for a fundamentally “different attitude” from the UK.

“The things I have been hearing so far are incompatible with smooth, and incompatible with orderly,” Dijsselbloem, who also chairs the 19-strong group of eurozone countries, said at a meeting of the group in Brussels. [...]

Full article The Guardian

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