Theresa May is to hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, Downing Street says. The British prime minister is going to reak her vacations to discuss with French President the issues of Brexit, BBC said.
While Brexit is going to be a new reality, the key differences between the UK and the EU remain, more than a year after negotiations started. British PM has been invited to Mr Macron’s holiday retreat in the south of France right after as the UK government steps up its engagement with counterparts in the EU over Brexit.
Jeremy Hunt told France and Germany had to “send a strong signal” to the European Commission on the need for a “pragmatic and sensible outcome”, and a Foreign Secretary warned that the likelihood of no deal being reached was “increasing by the day”.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, but the two sides have yet to agree on how their future relationship will work. Mr Hunt warned that a no-deal Brexit would be an economic “tragedy” for Britain and Europe.
“If it became harder for European businesses to access finance, that is far from trivial,”
he said, alluding to the flow of money from the City of London.
Meanwhile, the French government has not entirely rejected the UK’s latest Brexit plan, although President Macron is thought to be foremost among EU members’ leaders to have privately expressed concerns about whether it could work.
However, Brussels insiders have repeatedly said Barnier and his negotiating team are only acting on the orders of France, Germany and the rest of the 27 EU countries. Any inflexibility originates from the nation states, so, Mrs May is meeting other European leaders in Salzburg at the end of September to try to reach some sort of compromise on Brexit.
