European Union stokes Brexit tensions with 100-page draft exit deal

The European Union (EU) will challenge Theresa May on Wednesday when it publishes a draft Brexit treaty that ignores some of the UK prime minister’s most important demands.
 

The bloc is planning to set out in legal detail how it expects the UK to depart in just over one year’s time, and the terms of a transition period that will follow, according a person familiar with the matter. A German official added that the 27 members oppose an extension of the transitional period.

Talks on the transitional phase that businesses want to help smooth the UK’s withdrawal are continuing but the 100-page draft agreement is likely to exclude May’s proposals for how that phase should work, the person said. The document is also likely to leave out a key compromise May is seeking in the section on the UK’s future land border with Ireland, the person said.

The clash comes in a critical week for the Brexit process. In a key speech on Friday, May is due to announce her vision for the UK’s future trade partnership with the bloc in the hope of influencing the EU’s own vision before it is fleshed out at a summit in three weeks’ time.

Her rival in the meantime, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, has put forward his own version of Brexit that was looked upon more favourably by Brussels than May’s own plan.  Given her precarious situation, with only the thinnest of working majorities in Parliament, May can ill-afford a false move. Even before she weighs in, negotiations between the UK and the EU need to reach an agreement on the transitional period that is due to come into force after March 29, 2019 — exactly two years after May set the wheels in motion.

The talks have been tense so far, with disagreement over the rights of EU citizens moving to Britain during the period. 

That is a fight the U.K. now realises it might lose.