Europe’s newspapers were all about the acrimonious EU summit held in Salzburg, Austria on Wednesday and Thursday, at which U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May warned she is prepared to walk away from negotiations with the bloc after EU leaders rejected her Brexit plan.
In the U.K., the Guardian reported May had been “humiliated” by EU leaders after European Council President Donald Tusk and others declared the PM’s Chequers plan “will not work.” The i magazine called the PM’s defeat “the Salzburg disaster.” Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph focused on a “scathing” French President Emmanuel Macron, who said on Thursday that Brexit was “the choice of the British people, a choice pushed by those who predicted easy solutions … they are liars.” The tabloid Daily Mirror reported the British government was now “in crisis” after being told “Your Brexit’s broken.”
The European Union and Britain should treat one another like two hedgehogs in love who do not want to hurt each other, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has told Austrian newspapers. “We have to be careful, like two loving hedgehogs,” Juncker said when asked about the progress of the Brexit negotiations in an interview with several Austrian dailies including Die Presse and Salzburger Nachrichten published on Friday. “When two hedgehogs hug each other, you have to be careful that there will be no scratches.”
The Metro’s front page trumpeted ominously in German: “Nein Nein Nein.” Die Welt, meanwhile, had this cheeky English-language message for the British PM, alongside a picture of her glancing backwards: “Don’t look back in anger.” In non-Brexit news, Die Welt reported on Germany’s falling unemployment rate while Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung focused on the growing split in the country’s ruling coalition government.
Spain’s La Vanguardia declared that EU leaders were “only giving May a month” — until the October EU leaders’ summit — to come up with a new Brexit solution. .
The Sun went much further: “EU Dirty Rats – Euro mobsters ambush May,” it said alongside a mocked up picture of French President Emmanuel Macron and European Council President Donald Tusk cast as American gangsters with guns. Macron bluntly said May’s Brexit proposals, known as Chequers after the country house where they were agreed by the British cabinet in July, were “unacceptable”. Tusk was criticised for posting a picture of him offering May a choice of delicate cakes beside a message: “Sorry, no cherries.” That is a reference to what EU leaders cast as British attempts to cherry pick elements of EU membership. Britain is due to leave the European Union on March 29, yet little is clear: there is, so far, no divorce deal, rivals to May are circling and some rebels have vowed to vote against a possible Brexit deal.Both London and Brussels say they want a divorce deal, though there is limited time if the British and EU parliaments are to ratify a deal by March 29. Any deal must be approved by British lawmakers.
The Spectator used the headline: “Chequers goes pop: Theresa May’s Salzburg catastrophe.”
“May will emerge as unique in the annals of history if she survives as PM much longer in the face of setbacks on this scale,” British journalist Robert Peston wrote.
May’s former Brexit minister David Davis has said up to 40 lawmakers from the Conservative Party will vote against her Brexit plans.
Davis told Huffington Post there was a “rock-solid” core of party lawmakers who belonged to the European Research Group (ERG), a grouping which wants a sharper break with the EU and were willing to vote down her plans.
If a possible deal were rejected by the British parliament, Britain would face leaving the EU without an agreement, delaying Brexit or calling another referendum. “If all conventional roads lead to a hard no-deal Brexit, the notion of Parliament exerting control and forcing another referendum on us would begin to look not wholly fanciful,” Peston wrote in the Spectator.
If it left without a deal, the country would move from seamless trade with the EU to customs arrangements set by the World Trade Organization for external states. Many business chiefs and investors say a so called “no-deal” Brexit would weaken the West, panic financial markets and block the arteries of trade. Brexit supporters say such fears are exaggerated and Britain would thrive in the long term.
Politico,Reuters,Guardian
