EU Brexit chief eyes 2019 agreement

The EU is determined to sign a Brexit deal by 2019, but has warned the UK it won’t get everything it wants.

In his first major Brexit speech this year, the European Commission’s lead Brexit negotiator said the UK must honour its EU budget pledges and won’t be allowed to simply opt into the bits of the single market it likes.

“A scenario where there is no agreement, a no-deal scenario, is not ours,” Michel Barnier told a gathering of regional lawmakers in Brussels yesterday.

“We want an agreement. We want to succeed, succeed not against the British, but with them,” Mr Barnier added.

He insisted a new EU-UK trade deal — and transitional arrangements to ensure a smooth exit — will be discussed only after an “orderly withdrawal” is agreed, with a focus on citizens’ rights, British budget commitments and borders.

But the UK wants to discuss a future trade deal and transitional arrangements, in parallel.

EU officials hope the withdrawal will take only a couple of months to negotiate, leaving them around a year to discuss a trade deal, but much will depend on the mood once talks kick off in May.

On the UK’s Brexit bill, Mr Barnier said each country “must honour its commitments” but said that the UK would not pay “a single euro” it had not agreed to while a member of the EU.

“When a country leaves the union, there is no punishment, there is no price to pay to leave,” Mr Barnier said. “But we must settle the accounts; no more, no less.”

UK prime minister Theresa May has said she wants to sign an “ambitious” free trade deal with the soon-to-be 27-member EU, but Mr Barnier warned her she would not get an “à la carte” solution once the UK is outside the bloc.

“The United Kingdom will find itself, automatically, in a less favourable situation than an EU member state; it will not be able to participate in the single market à la carte,” Mr Barnier said.

He also warned the UK against lowering social, tax, environmental, and consumer standards to try to compete in the market following Brexit.

“What faces us is not the prospect of regulatory convergence, but the risk, the probability, of regulatory divergence that could damage the internal market,” he said.

EU leaders are to meet in Rome this weekend, without the UK, to discuss the future of the bloc on the occasion of its 60th anniversary.

They will reunite in Brussels on April 29 to sign off on Mr Barnier’s negotiating mandate, after which divorce talks will begin.