EU Agrees to Advance Brexit Talks to Trade -- 3rd Update
December 15 2017 - 10:42AM
Dow Jones News
By Laurence Norman and Jenny Gross
BRUSSELS--European leaders agreed to advance Brexit negotiations
but called on U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May to tell them quickly
what her government wants from a future trade agreement so serious
talks can start in March.
A week after reaching an agreement on the terms of Britain's
departure from the bloc, EU leaders decided Friday to allow talks
to progress to the bloc's future relationship with the U.K.
"Today is an important step on the road to delivering a smooth
and orderly Brexit and forging our deep and special future
partnership," Mrs. May responded on Twitter.
However, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the next step
is for the U.K. to say "very clearly what it wants" from talks. "I
think if this happens in the next few weeks, we can start in
earnest and by March we can have a very clear European
position."
The U.K. government has been divided over what sort of
relationship it wants with the EU, and what compromises pro-Brexit
forces are willing to make to maintain close trade ties with the
bloc.
Mrs. May is set to hold the first of what is expected to be
several cabinet meetings on Tuesday to decide the shape of
Britain's demands for a future trade agreement.
Until now, the government has been clear it wants Britain to
leave the EU's single market and customs union, and to narrow the
influence in Britain of EU courts.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned that the economic impact
of Britain leaving the EU's single market would be "huge," placing
the U.K.'s financial sector--which would lose its ability to
operate automatically across the bloc--at a "considerable
disadvantage."
Mrs. May has in recent months struggled to quell dissension from
members of her top team, made up of both pro- and anti-EU
politicians.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, one of the leaders of the
campaign to leave the EU, in September undercut Mrs. May by laying
out his own vision including a definitive break from EU rules
several days before she was set to make a keynote speech. Senior
officials have also clashed over immigration policy and over
whether Britain should accept all of its current EU obligations
during a two-year post-Brexit transition.
Mrs. May and her top team must determine how closely Britain
plans to align itself with EU trade rules and standards in the
future. Close alignment could help deliver a solid trade accord and
may ease specific challenges, like how to avoid a hard border with
Ireland.
One question hovering over the forthcoming debate: where Mrs.
May herself stands on this critical issue. She has kept her views
largely private so far, officials say.
Supporters of a clean break with the EU argue that only through
a shift away from the bloc's rules can Britain hope to start
locking in trade deals with other major economies that will bolster
the U.K.'s economic future.
Shortly after the leaders' decision, the bloc released
negotiating guidelines that confirmed a timeline for the coming
talks. They said that formal negotiations on a transition can begin
in January but that negotiations on the future trade agreement must
await until at least March, when the bloc plans to give a more
detailed negotiating mandate to the EU's chief negotiator, Michel
Barnier.
European Council President Donald Tusk confirmed Friday that
there could be informal, exploratory talks in coming weeks to help
provide clarity ahead of the formal trade talks. However, European
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said "the real
negotiations" would start only after March.
Some leaders warned about a rocky path ahead. Austrian
Chancellor Christian Kern raised questions about whether thorny
questions over Ireland have really been settled. "If there can't be
a border between Northern Ireland and the U.K. and no border
between Ireland and Northern Ireland, even school children can see
that's a riddle that still needs to be solved," he said.
On Friday afternoon, French President Emmanuel Macron said the
bloc's priorities for the second phase of negotiations were
"solidarity with Ireland, as we showed in phase one, and the
integrity of the single market." EU leaders have been clear that
Britain's access to the EU's markets must be constrained if there
are restrictions on EU workers moving to the U.K.
Leaders still need to produce a legal text for last week's
agreement on important divorce terms between the EU and Britain. EU
officials warned that the speed of agreeing that text could affect
the pace with which talks on a transition and a future trade
agreement proceed.
On Wednesday, Mrs. May suffered her most serious legislative
setback since Britain triggered its exit from the U.K., when
members of her Conservative party joined opposition lawmakers and
voted to guarantee the British Parliament the power to vote on
whether to accept any final Brexit deal.
Valentina Pop and Emre Peker contributed to this article.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Jenny
Gross at jenny.gross@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 15, 2017 10:27 ET (15:27 GMT)
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