Paris, August 3: British Prime Minister Theresa May heads to President Emmanuel Macron’s “summer Elysee Palace” on the Mediterranean coast 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 in Macron’s office 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. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney told the BBC on Friday that the risk of a no-deal Brexit was “uncomfortably high” as talks entered a “critical phase”.
Before heading to Bregancon, May spoke by telephone Friday with EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker on Brexit as well as trade in light of the tariffs dispute with the US. Juncker’s spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud added that “Our chief negotiator (Barnier) has neither hardened nor softened his position. It remains constructive, as it always has been.”
“There is nothing threatening about May’s shuttle diplomacy. This is to be expected and it’s normal that she is trying to smooth things out,” an EU diplomat in Brussels said on Friday. “But Brexit remains Brexit. It’s the same stuff over and over again. There are the same red lines.”
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.”
