The UK and the EU late on Monday emerged from last-minute talks to announce that they had finally removed the biggest roadblock to their Brexit divorce deal, only hours before the British Parliament was due to decide the fate of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s hard-won plan to leave the EU.
On the eve of yesterday’s vote in London, May flew to Strasbourg, France, to seek revisions, guarantees or other changes from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that would persuade reluctant British legislators to back her withdrawal agreement with the EU, which they resoundingly rejected in January.
At a joint news conference, May and Juncker claimed to have succeeded.
Photo: AFP
May said new documents to be added to the deal provided “legally binding changes” to the part relating to the Irish border.
However, the legal 585-page withdrawal agreement itself was left intact.
“In politics, sometimes you get a second chance. It is what you do with this second chance that counts. Because there will be no third chance,” Juncker told the British lawmakers.
“Let’s be crystal clear about the choice: It is this deal or Brexit might not happen at all,” he said.
May said the changes should overcome lawmakers’ qualms about a mechanism in the deal designed to keep an open border between Britain’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland.
The mechanism, known as the backstop, is a safeguard that would keep the UK in a customs union with the EU until a permanent new trading relationship is in place.
Brexit supporters fear that the backstop could be used to bind the UK to EU regulations indefinitely.
May said the new wording “will guarantee that the EU cannot act with the intent of applying the backstop indefinitely.”
“Now is the time to come together to back this improved Brexit deal and deliver on the instruction of the British people,” she said.
However, the changes appear to fall well short of Brexiteers’ demands for a unilateral British exit mechanism from the backstop.
Pro-Brexit lawmakers said they would read the fine print and wait for the judgement of the British attorney general before deciding how to vote.
Announcing the breakthrough in the British House of Commons, Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said that lawmakers faced “a fundamental choice ... to vote for the improved deal or to plunge this country into a political crisis.”
Juncker told the UK that “there will be no new negotiations” if lawmakers rejected the deal again.
The UK is due to pull out of the EU in less than three weeks, on March 29, but the British government has not been able to win parliamentary approval for its agreement with the bloc on withdrawal terms and future relations.
The impasse has raised fears of a chaotic “no deal” Brexit that could mean major disruption for businesses and people in Britain and the 27 remaining EU countries.
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