Echoes of the EU Summit

Scheduled for Spring 2019, Britains divorce from the EU is by no means smooth. After five rounds of talks and in spite of the efforts made by negotiators, divergences linger on and progress has not been substantial

Corina Cristea, 23.10.2017, 13:39

The autumn meeting of the European Council, which brought the EU leaders together in Brussels at the end of last week, did not identify enough progress to enable the Union to move on to the next stage of the Brexit negotiations, namely the one concerning the future of its trade relations with London. The hurdles mainly have to do with the amounts that London will have to pay after leaving the bloc.

However, rumours of a “deadlock” in the Brexit talks are exaggerated, the European Council President Donald Tusk said at the end of the summit. The 27 EU leaders agreed to initiate preparations for what the Europeans describe as phase two in the talks with London, namely the negotiation of the relations between the EU and Britain after the official Brexit date of March 29, 2019, particularly a prospective trade deal and possibly a transition period as well. The participants postponed for December the decision to authorise the EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier to start the talks on this second stage, on grounds that not enough progress has been achieved in the three key areas for the Union, namely the Brexit bill, the rights of the EU citizens in the UK and the situation on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. On the contrary, the British PM Theresa May insists that these chapters must be negotiated in parallel with the future EU-UK relation.

Representing Romania at the Brussels summit, President Klaus Iohannis summarised the situation in a press conference at the end of the meeting: “There have been intensive negotiations, some progress has been made, but it is not enough. We have agreed today that there hasn’t been enough progress to move on to the next phase in the EU relations with Britain, but this should not generate pessimism. The two sides have talked, our respective positions are now somewhat closer to each other, but not close enough to move on. We will keep negotiating and will try to reach a place where we can okay the next stage, in the next Council meeting in December.”

The European leaders have also discussed the migration issue. The President of Romania said good results were reported on all routes, in the sense that the number of migrants has dropped. However, in his opinion, this issue will remain a quasi-permanent matter on the European Union’s agenda.