LUXEMBOURG - Britain’s latest proposals on the terms of its departure from the European Union are still not enough for an agreement and a legal text is needed by the end of Tuesday for a deal to be agreed at a leaders’ summit this week, three diplomatic sources said.
Relaying comments made by the EU’s Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, at a meeting of the bloc’s ministers in Luxembourg, they said that if the Tuesday deadline was missed then talks would have to continue after the Thursday-Friday summit.
“We need to land this tonight,” an EU official told Reuters.
However, British Brexit Minister Stephen Barclay struck a more positive note as he arrived in Luxembourg for talks with ministers from the 27 countries that will remain in the EU.
“The talks are ongoing we need to give them space to proceed,” he told reporters. “Detailed conversation are underway and a deal is still very possible.”
The main sticking point to reaching a deal before the Oct. 31 scheduled date for Britain’s exit is customs and security arrangements for the border between EU member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland - the only land frontier between the EU and the United Kingdom after Brexit.
Barnier said earlier that while an agreement was still possible this week, it was still possible and it was “high time to turn good intentions in a legal text”.
Finland’s EU affairs minister, Tytti Tuppurainen, said the EU must prepare for a no-deal and a third extension of the tortuous divorce process.
“All scenarios are open,” she said, adding that leaders at the summit would discuss pushing back the departure date beyond Oct. 31.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a leading figure in the 2016 referendum in which Britons opted to leave the EU, has pledged to take the United Kingdom out of the bloc on that day whether or not a withdrawal agreement has been reached.
But the British parliament has passed a law saying the country cannot leave without an agreement, and Johnson has not explained how he can get around that.
Malta’s EU minister, asked if he would bet on there being a Brexit deal this month, said: “I would not.”(FA)
