The EU has told Theresa May it will not start discussing the terms of a trade relationship with the UK until February at the earliest, and only then if the British prime minister has taken a grip of her divided cabinet and come up with an agreed vision of the future.
While May was being lauded by her ministers in London on Friday, EU officials in Brussels said that when leaders did move the Brexit talks forward, the first negotiations would have to be limited to the terms of a time-limited transition period.
The EU was unable to engage in substantive talks about a future trade deal without “more clarity” from May on her cabinet’s vision of a free trade agreement with the EU, a senior EU official said.
Suggestions put forward from London so far have been dismissed as “cherry-picking” and “having your cake and eat it”. “The UK has not been particularly specific,” the official said. “It has been setting out a number of red lines, but what the UK has been saying so far still entails a number of internal contradictions and does not seem entirely realistic to us.”
In recent weeks, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have suggested the British could deregulate to gain a competitive advantage in certain sectors while enjoying frictionless trade with the European continent and Ireland.
The EU official said of trade talks: “I read in the press that the cabinet has not yet discussed this matter … We need more information from the UK to really be able to engage.”
For more read the full of article at The Guardian.
