EU is not interested in Brexit blame game – Barnier
5663 Mins Read
The EU is “not interested in the blame game,” chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said Friday, as he spelt out legal reassurances offered to the U.K. in recent days.
The unexpected précis of the EU’s negotiating position came in a series of tweets from Barnier, just hours after British Prime Minister Theresa May urged the EU in a speech to do more to help her win the support of the House of Commons for the Brexit deal in a crunch vote next Tuesday.
May said the EU had to “make a choice” and that now was “the moment for us to act.” But EU negotiators appeared riled by the suggestion of inaction on their part.
Barnier’s move, spelling out the EU’s take on specific items in active negotiation with London’s negotiator is highly unusual and a sign that he is unwilling to cede control of the narrative surrounding the talks. Brussels is keen to show that is not simply batting back U.K. proposals but is proposing solutions of its own — in the process rebutting the “inflexibility” charge that is often levied from London.
Barnier briefed EU27 ambassadors on the status of talks with the U.K. shortly after May’s speech. Emerging from the meeting, he told the BBC: “The EU stands united. We are not interested in the blame game. We are interested in the result. We are still working.”
Yesterday, through Barnier, the EU has offered London a “unilateral exit” from the UK-wide parts of the backstop plan for Northern Ireland in an eleventh-hour move to show Great Britain would not be “forced into a customs union against its will” after Brexit. With negotiations deadlocked, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, took the gamble of announcing the package of proposals offered to Theresa May, even though they fall short of the UK’s demands. The legally binding measures aim to change the terms of debate in Westminster as Mrs May’s exit deal seems to be heading towards another House of Commons defeat on Tuesday. But the British government dismissed Mr Barnier’s proposal as an attempt to revive a previous EU initiative the UK had already rejected in negotiations last year. “With a very real deadline looming, now is not the time to rerun old arguments,” tweeted Stephen Barclay, Brexit secretary.
“The UK has put forward clear new proposals. We now need to agree a balanced solution that can work for both sides.” One Eurosceptic Conservative MP said: “Barnier’s offer is a framework which is difficult to leave, couched in woolly language which explicitly splits our country in two. Do they think we are stupid?” The backstop — which is loathed by Brexiters — aims to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland by keeping the entire UK in a basic customs union with the EU, while tying Northern Ireland even more closely to the bloc’s regulatory and customs regime.
Barnier’s proposals include a “unilateral exit clause” that would allow Great Britain to break its customs union with the bloc as long as other parts of the backstop still apply to Northern Ireland. Such a Northern Ireland-only backstop has been rejected by Mrs May in the past because it would create a customs border along the Irish Sea, dividing the UK’s internal market.
