EU Council will be too late to negotiate Brexit deal: French source

 

FILE PHOTO: The British and European Union flags are seen behind an empty podium which was reserved for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during a scheduled news conference with Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel in Luxembourg, September 16, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

 

PARIS/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Time to agree a Brexit deal is running out and it will be too late for European leaders to iron out a deal at a European Council meeting in Brussels in mid-October, a French diplomatic source said on Thursday.

 

The French warning comes after President Emmanuel Macron met the Finnish prime minister in Paris on Wednesday.

 

“The idea was to say that time is running out and that we won’t be negotiating directly at the European Council in mid-October,” the source said.

 

Finnish media cited Prime Minister Antti Rinne as saying he and Macron had agreed an end-September deadline for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to present Europe with a concrete proposal to avoid a no-deal Brexit.

 

The source said this had been the message already conveyed by Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month.

 

After his meeting with Macron at the Elysee palace on Wednesday, the Finnish premier said Britain has until end-September to explain how they will avoid crashing out of the EU, according to Finnish news agency STT.

 

“If there is no proposals - and I believe that quite a few European country leaders will agree with the position we reached with Macron today - then, it’s over,” Rinne was quoted as saying.

 

“We are a bit worried over what is happening at the moment in Britain and the mess which is created in Europe,” he added.

 

Separately, two senior EU diplomats said there was no firm deadline of Sept 30 and no deadline has been discussed among the 27, but one added that there was a realisation that the end of September was as late as the UK could go to avoid a failure at the Oct. 17-18 summit.

 

“The 30th is not a precise date discussed and agreed by the 27. But these issues are not easy to tackle. If you want to prepare properly for the summit, the 30th of September is already tight,” the EU diplomat told Reuters.

 

“If you are too late the council will not be able to produce any meaningful results.”

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-09-19

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True... but:

 

Brexit: MEPs overwhelmingly vote to support Article 50 extension should UK request one

 

Quote

MEPs today voted 544-126 for a resolution supporting the UK being given a Brexit deadline extension should it request one.

This was on the condition the prolongation is justified and has a specific purpose, such as avoiding a “no-deal” departure, holding general elections or a referendum, revoking Article 50, or approving the Withdrawal Agreement.

https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/18/watch-live-juncker-and-barnier-address-eu-parliament-on-brexit-as-meps-vote-on-article-50

There is nothing the UK can before October 31st to get an agreement...

 

Although it is up to the leaders to agree, the resolution supporting an extension by MEP's is a good indicator that we will get it.  

Edited September 19, 20196 yr by Basil B

Was obvious they were going to be awkward,just like they,beenfor the last 42 years.no deals better than a bad deal,these colours don,t run.

34 minutes ago, kingdong said:

Was obvious they were going to be awkward,just like they,beenfor the last 42 years.no deals better than a bad deal,these colours don,t run.

Exactly who is being awkward here? The UK has had over three years to come up with a concrete proposal for a deal, but never did it. You can’t blame your opponent at the negotiating table for having done some preparation and lay down a proposed text - but I’m sure you will.

BJ just don’t seem to seriously seek a deal - and will then blame the EU for the following crash......

 

7 minutes ago, damascase said:

Exactly who is being awkward here? The UK has had over three years to come up with a concrete proposal for a deal, but never did it. You can’t blame your opponent at the negotiating table for having done some preparation and lay down a proposed text - but I’m sure you will.

BJ just don’t seem to seriously seek a deal - and will then blame the EU for the following crash......

 

Boris is now effectively tied up by parliament and is not able to seriously make a deal.

 

Fine, then let the overpaid and mostly useless MPs come up with a deal during the next week to give to the EU.

 

They own it now, so make it their problem.

 

Of course it might be a bit tricky as half the political parties can't agree what the party should do  and most of the parties don't want to talk to the other parties but they all want to be the "newest and best government" to take the UK out of the EU or to leave it in.

 

As my Mum used to say, "its a right buggers muddle".

2 hours ago, damascase said:

Exactly who is being awkward here? The UK has had over three years to come up with a concrete proposal for a deal, but never did it. You can’t blame your opponent at the negotiating table for having done some preparation and lay down a proposed text - but I’m sure you will.

BJ just don’t seem to seriously seek a deal - and will then blame the EU for the following crash......

 

Allow me to add, there is/was/has been a deal, negotiated between the UK Government and the EU authorities, which was agreed on by both sides, end of story. ...Was it not that the leave camp 'traitors' inside the Conservative party (yes, these are the real ones!) voted against the deal negotiated by their own Conservative Government! This should not, never, be forgotten!

2 minutes ago, bangrak said:

Allow me to add, there is/was/has been a deal, negotiated between the UK Government and the EU authorities, which was agreed on by both sides, end of story. ...Was it not that the leave camp 'traitors' inside the Conservative party (yes, these are the real ones!) voted against the deal negotiated by their own Conservative Government! This should not, never, be forgotten!

Good job, Boris! 

I thought Theresa could save us from Brexit, but it took a hero like Johnson to kill Brexit stone-dead.

It’s like in The Italian Job, after Theresa stops the bus, teetering on the cliff, and says ‘we can all get out of this alive’ and Boris gets off the bus to go to the back and collect the gold.

Theresa, the Tories, the United Kingdom, the 350M bus, we’ll find all their corpses at the bottom of the ravine, and Boris will be king alone on a dry and barren mountain road that takes him back to Rome or Paris, whichever way he wants to go

Allow me to add, there is/was/has been a deal, negotiated between the UK Government and the EU authorities, which was agreed on by both sides, end of story. ...Was it not that the leave camp 'traitors' inside the Conservative party (yes, these are the real ones!) voted against the deal negotiated by their own Conservative Government! This should not, never, be forgotten!

No. The traitors were the PM and those who allowed themselves to submit to the Merkel/May Surrender Treaty. We won’t forget that the ERG forced the collaborators to reveal the AG’s office legal opinion that we could be tied to the EU for ever. Even the LAB side voted against that trick deal.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the deal is over,
Thought I'd someone more to play.

I have hold my tongue every time that I hear from Brit expats that "we pay into the EU much more than we get back". They seem to have no idea what the economic benefits have been for the UK as a member of the EU. Prior to joining the EU, the UK was known as "the sick man of Europe". Had to apply three times before being accepted. The UK economy with some years being exceptions has grown tremendously during their years as a member. 

11 minutes ago, Emdog said:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the deal is over,
Thought I'd someone more to play.

 

 

How's your pond, Mr Thoreau?

6 minutes ago, kamahele said:

I have hold my tongue every time that I hear from Brit expats that "we pay into the EU much more than we get back". They seem to have no idea what the economic benefits have been for the UK as a member of the EU. Prior to joining the EU, the UK was known as "the sick man of Europe". Had to apply three times before being accepted. The UK economy with some years being exceptions has grown tremendously during their years as a member. 

 

Well, perhaps it would have been better to have held your tongue, since the label "sick man of Europe" was originally awarded to the Ottoman Empire courtesy of the much sicker man of Europe, Tsar Nicholas (of Winter Palace massacre fame).

When the label was applied to the UK it was in fact used by the Tories to get rid of Wilson and Callaghan's Labour Party.  (Though the Tories of Harold Macmillan's day were hardly examples of youth and energy.)

 

If anyone deserves a mention for the present healthy state of the Brit economy it is not the Brussels buffoons but dear old Maggie Thatcher, who radically changed the country round in the late 80s, not always for the better.

11 minutes ago, kamahele said:

I have hold my tongue every time that I hear from Brit expats that "we pay into the EU much more than we get back". They seem to have no idea what the economic benefits have been for the UK as a member of the EU. Prior to joining the EU, the UK was known as "the sick man of Europe". Had to apply three times before being accepted. The UK economy with some years being exceptions has grown tremendously during their years as a member. 

It's true. The Brexiteers actually believe that the UK has sent fools to Brussels for over 40 years. Now the Brexiteers celebrate their new nationalism, but stating their elected leaders over 40 years of stupidity. Arrogance and no respect for their own country leaders. As if your own country leaders have not acted for 40 years in the interests of their own country.

14 hours ago, damascase said:

Exactly who is being awkward here?

Quisling Remain MPs, undermining the UK's negotiating position, and working with the EU negotiators?

14 hours ago, damascase said:

The UK

The crypto-Remain leadership of TM, you mean

14 hours ago, damascase said:

has had over three years to come up with a concrete proposal for a deal, but never did it. You can’t blame your opponent at the negotiating table for having done some preparation and lay down a proposed text - but I’m sure you will.

BJ just don’t seem to seriously seek a deal - and will then blame the EU for the following crash......

The whole game from the start seems to be pass the (blame) parcel, because the EU can't permit a successful exit from it lest it emboldens other nations to try to cecede from the empire, which has up until now pursued an aggressive expansionist agenda. The EU position always seems disingenuous.

 

11 hours ago, bangrak said:

Allow me to add, there is/was/has been a deal, negotiated between the UK Government and the EU authorities, which was agreed on by both sides, end of story. ...Was it not that the leave camp 'traitors' inside the Conservative party (yes, these are the real ones!) voted against the deal negotiated by their own Conservative Government! This should not, never, be forgotten!

It's an unreasonable asymmetric deal, and further evidence of the illegitimacy of a remainer parliament that is at odds with the expressed will of the electorate, and refuses to hold a general election to obtain a mandate.

 

The wording of this bill is appalling - it's the legislature trying to act as the executive:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/26/enacted/data.htm

 

The latest action through the courts is the legislature trying to drag the judiciary into acting as the executive, it's intolerable, this law, and this parliament must be challenged - in the courts too if necessary, and forced to hold a general election, if not, then the monarch should instruct the military to remove them from parliament, and dissolve parliament and hold a general election.

 

" courts should not seek to regulate the prerogatives of sovereignty where Parliament has chosen not to do so. "

 

" What is vital is that an abuse of convention does not lead the Supreme Court in a direction that could fundamentally alter the nature of supremacy within the constitution. The oversight role of the courts is vital to ensuring legality within the constitution, but this does not extend to policing the fundamental relationship of supremacy that binds the Crown to Parliament. For the rule of recognition within our constitution to continue to make sense, only the supreme body can determine matters of supreme rule. "

https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2019/09/17/stephen-tierney-prorogation-and-the-courts-a-question-of-sovereignty/

 

The Remainiac faction are out of control; this game has to stop or be stopped.

17 minutes ago, tomacht8 said:

 Arrogance and no respect for their own country leaders.

That's an interesting thing to say when you look at what the Remain establishment in parliament and the courts and in the media is doing. It's like a state within a state, trying to pull all the levers to unmake the decisions of the people by any means necessary.: arrogance and no respect for their own voters.

49 minutes ago, kamahele said:

I have hold my tongue every time that I hear from Brit expats that "we pay into the EU much more than we get back". They seem to have no idea what the economic benefits have been for the UK as a member of the EU. Prior to joining the EU, the UK was known as "the sick man of Europe". Had to apply three times before being accepted. The UK economy with some years being exceptions has grown tremendously during their years as a member. 

All those benefits like paying a Billion a month to subsidize net beneficiaries, opening up our borders and fishing waters, having a huge trade deficit, transferring power to Brussels?

 

The UK has done well despite being a member, not because of it.

 

As already stated by a previous poster, we were the sick man of Europe because of poor domestic governance, not because we weren't in the "common market" as it was called before it morphed into a project of federalization. 

 

Let's hope it is too late to negotiate, we can get out of this "Empire" as Verhofstadt recently called it.

 

On the issue of "Empires", here is an excellent article highlighting more Remainer hypocrisy.

 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/09/16/its-<deleted>-who-are-nostalgic-for-empire/

 

7 minutes ago, CaptainNemo said:

That's an interesting thing to say when you look at what the Remain establishment in parliament and the courts and in the media is doing. It's like a state within a state, trying to pull all the levers to unmake the decisions of the people by any means necessary.: arrogance and no respect for their own voters.

I can not follow.

You had a vote 51,xx% to 48,xx%.

Every responsible country leader must try to unite the two camps. That means making compromises. But what we experience is the polarization and separation. That will never lead to unity. May's deal was an attempt to find a compromise solution.

6 minutes ago, tomacht8 said:

I can not follow.

You had a vote 51,xx% to 48,xx%.

Every responsible country leader must try to unite the two camps. That means making compromises. But what we experience is the polarization and separation. That will never lead to unity. May's deal was an attempt to find a compromise solution.

Exactly. But leavers will never accept it's what's best for Britain that takes priority. If that means revoking article 50, then so be it.

If Boris would want a reasonable deal then he would have presented that long time ago.

He has no reasonable deal to offer, that's obvious.

 

By now I wonder what the EU will do because it does not look like any parliament in the UK will be able to offer and/or accept a reasonable deal. That leaves the UK leaving without a deal and then headache for years to sort out that mess. Or in a referendum maybe 50.1% decide to stay in the EU. And that will also be a lot of headache for the EU and a lot of headache in the UK.

 

Is there any possible good solution? I don't know where it should come from or how it could possibly look like.

"Easiest deal in history".

 

Yeah right.

4 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

If Boris would want a reasonable deal then he would have presented that long time ago.

He has no reasonable deal to offer, that's obvious.

 

By now I wonder what the EU will do because it does not look like any parliament in the UK will be able to offer and/or accept a reasonable deal. That leaves the UK leaving without a deal and then headache for years to sort out that mess. Or in a referendum maybe 50.1% decide to stay in the EU. And that will also be a lot of headache for the EU and a lot of headache in the UK.

 

Is there any possible good solution? I don't know where it should come from or how it could possibly look like.

I do not know who can do it. The solution would be a Brexit with a realistic schedule and clear milestones. The entire population of the UK, as you can read here in TV, seems like incited. No rational consideration of the situation. Everything seems imprudent and impulsive. Critics, professionals and other thinkers are shouted down. Everything looks super short and shot from the hip.

From such a situation can not come out good. 

 

In my professional situation, I had to negotiate with large corporations for years to get a small contract.

The Brexit dimensions, interconnections and effects are, in my opinion, still underestimated by many responsible persons.

18 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

If Boris would want a reasonable deal then he would have presented that long time ago.

He has no reasonable deal to offer, that's obvious.

 

By now I wonder what the EU will do because it does not look like any parliament in the UK will be able to offer and/or accept a reasonable deal. That leaves the UK leaving without a deal and then headache for years to sort out that mess. Or in a referendum maybe 50.1% decide to stay in the EU. And that will also be a lot of headache for the EU and a lot of headache in the UK.

 

Is there any possible good solution? I don't know where it should come from or how it could possibly look like.

The best solution is to revoke A 50, and junk brexit, then call a GE. Erase the past and start afresh.  

39 minutes ago, tomacht8 said:

I can not follow.

You had a vote 51,xx% to 48,xx%.

Every responsible country leader must try to unite the two camps. That means making compromises. But what we experience is the polarization and separation. That will never lead to unity. May's deal was an attempt to find a compromise solution.

I disagree. May's deal is an abomination. Besides, if Remain had won 52/48 it would have been full steam ahead with a federal Europe, with Britain as an integral part of the European Empire that Verhofstadt talks of.

 

There would have been no talk of compromise from Remainers, no attempts to keep Leavers happy, no RINO. The only reason Remainers talk of compromise is because they lost.

 

What a nightmare. So many quislings within the ranks of the Labour and Tory parties, and within the ranks of ex UK PMs, civil servants etc. Bastards. Nobody can be trusted on the UK side, never mind the EU.

36 minutes ago, stephenterry said:

Exactly. But leavers will never accept it's what's best for Britain that takes priority. If that means revoking article 50, then so be it.

Lib Dem without the Dem. Demmit!

18 minutes ago, Rookiescot said:

"Easiest deal in history".

 

Yeah right.

Indeed.

 

We all knew the EU were a difficult, stubborn, inflexible organization, but the staggering scale of belligerence they have shown has shocked even the most ardent Eurosceptics. 

 

 

9 minutes ago, stephenterry said:

The best solution is to revoke A 50, and junk brexit, then call a GE. Erase the past and start afresh.  

Would that be because you lost the referendum then? 

1 minute ago, nauseus said:

Lib Dem without the Dem. Demmit!

Indeed, the Liberal Democrats wanting to ignore the Democratic vote so that we can proceed to join the European Empire.

 

They couldn't have picked a less appropriate name. Laughable.

8 minutes ago, Thingamabob said:

What a nightmare. So many quislings within the ranks of the Labour and Tory parties, and within the ranks of ex UK PMs, civil servants etc. Bastards. Nobody can be trusted on the UK side, never mind the EU.

Yep, one of the most disappointing things to come out of all of this has been the willingness of UK MP's to side with the EU against the UK government. Disgraceful.

Just now, OneMoreFarang said:

If Boris would want a reasonable deal then he would have presented that long time ago.

He has no reasonable deal to offer, that's obvious.

Boris has only been in the job for 57 days, how would it be possible to present a deal a "long time ago"