The European Union is pressing ahead with plans for a no-deal Brexit, amid uncertainty about when high-level negotiations will resume.
With 149 days until Brexit day, time is running out to secure a deal that the British government wants to nail down this autumn, to allow time for the agreement to gain assent from parliament and the European parliament.
EU diplomats meeting on Tuesday agreed to hold a series of no-deal planning seminars in November, covering citizens’ rights, aviation, ground transport, customs, border controls and financial services.
Senior British and EU officials are in constant contact and neither side has given up on holding a special Brexit summit in mid-November to strike a deal. With British politics focused on the budget, EU diplomats do not expect talks between the EU chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, to resume this week.
Some European officials see a growing risk of sliding into an accidental no-deal, if the British parliament votes down any agreement the embattled prime minister strikes with the EU.
Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian MEP, who sits on the European parliament’s Brexit steering group, said he had become more pessimistic about a Brexit deal, following Theresa May’s speech to parliament last week, where she again rejected the EU proposals on Ireland, which the EU sees as reneging on earlier agreements. “Since the British government started backtracking on its commitments in the joint report [of December 2017] I have become less optimistic about a deal being clinched,” he told the Guardian.
EU leaders decided they would not come to a November summit unless there was substantial progress in talks, which are deadlocked over a solution to avoid a hard border on the island of Irland. Barnier told EU leaders earlier this month not to expect progress until December, which leaves very little time for UK parliamentary ratification.
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