Britain's Prime Minister, Theresa May, leaves 10 Downing Street, in central London, Britain June 15, 2017.
REUTERS/Toby Melville
Theresa May
should agree to pay Britain's bills to the European Union and drop
threats to walk out without a legal deal if she wants talks on the
"softer Brexit" some of her allies are calling for, EU negotiators say.
If
the chastened prime minister and Brexit Secretary David Davis take a
gentler tone when talks finally launch in Brussels next week, they could
win valuable concessions, some think.
A
week after May lost her majority in an election she had called in the
hope of strengthening her hand in the talks, some fellow Conservatives
want her to focus more on limiting the damage to business and less on
cutting immigration and other ties to the EU when Britain leaves the
bloc in March 2019.
Other EU
governments will be happy to let Britain keep trade open as it would
limit the hit to their own economies, officials told Reuters, though
they are not ready to ease conditions that May would struggle to sell to
her party's Brexit hardliners.
But
speculating now on different kinds of trade pact - on "soft Brexit" or
"hard" - is to put cart before horse, they say. EU leaders gave chief
negotiator Michel Barnier no authority to so much as talk about trade
until he clinches outline deals on Brussels' priority issues, including
on what London owes them.
Barnier
this week acknowledged "sensitivity" in London at EU suggestions that
Britain might owe it some 60 billion euros (52.75 billion pounds) in
2019 and said sorting out the issue soon would help a trade deal: "I
would like to very quickly play down this question, and find concrete,
pragmatic and just solutions," he said on Monday.
"We need trust to build the future relationship."
EU
leaders, who will meet May at a summit next Thursday, have been
irritated by her repeated threats to walk out with "no deal" -- even if
most see that as a campaigning bluff given the chaos it would cause.
They are also irked by her refusal to say Britain will definitely pay
what Brussels calls a "hefty bill" -- some ministers have even said the
EU may owe London money.
HAGGLING OVER BILL
If Davis, who launches the
formal negotiations with Barnier on Monday, can show British willing on
the EU's priority "Phase One" issues, then trade talks could get under
way by the turn of the year -- a step-by-step timetable Barnier says
must be followed to limit the risk of a disruptive "no deal" scenario.
An
EU official close to the matter said the "softer Brexit" talk could be
"productive" and help progress in the first months, where the British
attitude to discussing the financial settlement "will be the first
serious test of the negotiations".
There
are also differences over the other priority issue for Brussels --
securing the rights of 3 million EU citizens living in Britain -- but
diplomats see those as less problematic.
And
as leaders welcomed the new tone in London and talk of a "softer
Brexit" that may be less disruptive than May's clean break with the
single market and customs union, officials from at least some
governments saw compromise on the British bill.
"If
they refuse to pay, there will be no agreement," a senior official
handling Brexit for one EU member state government told Reuters.
"However, discussing about the amount of money, here there will be
flexibility," he added.
A senior
Brussels official said the amount, which compares to London's annual net
EU payment of around 10 billion euros, would still be "peanuts" in
terms of the overall economy and also that the final bill would be
determined less by technical and legal arguments than by hard-headed
political horse-trading.
Significant progress in talks on the budget
and citizens' rights issue, as well as on issues around the new EU-UK
land border in Ireland, would allow EU leaders to give Barnier a mandate
by December to discuss a future, close relationship and, potentially,
years of transition after 2019 to smooth its way.
Barnier
speaks of a willingness to look at various options but EU officials
also stress that greater access to EU markets will mean accepting
greater costs, closer to EU membership, and question whether Britain can
find a political consensus on that.
The
other 27, including lead powers Germany and France, want to dissuade
others from emulating Britain and so insist that any Brexit deal must be
less advantageous than full membership.
"All
the options are balanced and come with obligations," an EU official
working on Brexit said, noting that May had seemed to be looking for a
sweeping free trade deal like that agreed last year with Canada but that
some of those calling for "soft" Brexit cited arrangements such as
those with Norway and Turkey.
Norway
is in the single market, in return for accepting free immigration from
the EU, EU courts and budget payments. Turkey has special arrangements
with the customs union but must follow Brussels in trade policies with
other global players.
For
Brussels, a concern with starting talks on such models would be that
Brexit supporters might end up blocking them, raising the risk of time
running out to get any deal: "Would you ... 10 months later find that
there was no real majority for that?" the official said. "It all becomes
very uncertain."
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