Boris Johnson to meet Macron and Merkel in attempt to break Brexit impasse
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Boris Johnson is expected to make a diplomatic dash to meet Emmanuel Macron in Paris and Angela Merkel in Berlin early next week as he seeks to break the Brexit impasse.
BBC reports that “Boris Johnson will tell EU leaders there needs to be a new Brexit deal when he makes his first trip abroad as PM later this week.” However No 10 said there will be “very little discussion” of Brexit during the meetings in France and Germany.
The prime minister, who has yet to leave the UK to meet any of the European Union’s leaders since entering Downing Street, will also speak to the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, and Donald Tusk, the European council president, by phone, the Guardian understands.
Tusk said earlier this year that there would be a “special place in hell” for politicians who had championed Brexit “without a sketch of a plan” as to how to make it a success, in what was widely seen at the time as a reference to Johnson.
The flurry of talks come before next weekend’s meeting in Biarritz of the G7, the leaders of the world’s biggest economies, where diplomats expect Johnson to be given a “reality check” as he seeks to lobby the EU to ditch the Irish backstop.
EU diplomats said Johnson would be in Paris on Tuesday and Berlin on Wednesday although the dates are yet to be formally confirmed. UK government sources declined to comment but Whitehall officials played down any hopes of a breakthrough.
As Johnson prepares to make his European tour, a leaked paper from the German government suggested his insistence that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October with or without a deal had so far failed to prompt a rethink in Brussels and the European capitals.
A document prepared by officials for the German finance minister, Olaf Scholz, before talks in Berlin yesterday with the chancellor of the exchequer, Sajid Javid, stressed the importance of holding out against any renegotiation despite Johnson’s “tough negotiating position”. The paper makes clear that while the German government believes the British government will carry out its threat, the EU still has no intention of returning to the negotiating table on Johnson’s terms.
