The pound jumped in value after Barnier, during a visit to Bled in Slovenia on Monday, said: “If we are realistic, I want to reach an agreement on the first stage of the negotiation, which is the Brexit treaty, within six or eight weeks.
“The treaty is clear, we have two years to reach an agreement before they [the UK] leave ... in March 2019. That means that taking into account the time necessary for the ratification process in the House of Commons on one side, the European parliament and the council on the other side, we must reach an agreement before the beginning of November. I think it is possible.” [...]
The EU27 is expected to insist on a resolution over the issue of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland is achieved by the time of a leaders’ summit in October in order for a deal to be possible.
However, the special summit – likely to be held on 13 November – would then allow EU heads of state and government to wrap up the terms of a political declaration on a future deal on trade, security, aviation and fisheries, among other issues. [...]
A report in the Financial Times suggested supplementary guidelines – the formal documents produced by the leaders to instruct Barnier – could also be under discussion in Salzburg. If approved, they would then be adopted at the meeting in October, the paper said.
The FT quoted a senior EU diplomat as suggesting the new instructions would “serve as a sort of mandate to do the deal”. EU and UK sources said the likelihood at this stage of such a formal move had been overblown.
Senior diplomats representing the member states in the negotiations said that while there would be warm words at Salzburg, there were no plans yet to offer up a new set of guidelines to Barnier or for them to be discussed by the leaders.
EU sources noted that the heads of state and government had stuck with the same principles on the need to avoid “cherrypicking” from full EU membership since the start of the talks. [...]
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