Remarks by President Donald Tusk after the informal meeting of EU heads of State or government in Gothenburg

17 November 2017

The European Council President said that, in order to move-on to the second phase of Brexit talks, EU negotiators "need to see much more progress on Ireland and on a financial settlement."

[...] In October, the EU27 started internal preparations on the second phase of negotiations, namely transition and the future relationship. And we will be ready to move-on to the second phase already in December. But in order to do that we need to see more progress from the UK side. While good progress on citizens' rights is being made, we need to see much more progress on Ireland and on a financial settlement. In order to avoid any ambiguities about our work calendar, I made it very clear to Prime Minister May that this progress needs to happen at the beginning of December at the latest. If there is no sufficient progress by then, I will not be in a position to propose new guidelines on transition and the future relationship at the December European Council. We agreed to meet again next Friday to assess the situation in more detail. 

Full remarks

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