{"id":58698,"date":"2019-04-09T09:34:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T09:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/?p=58698"},"modified":"2019-04-09T09:34:10","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T09:34:10","slug":"may-to-meet-merkel-macron-ahead-of-crucial-brexit-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/may-to-meet-merkel-macron-ahead-of-crucial-brexit-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"May to meet Merkel, Macron ahead of crucial Brexit summit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday started a last-minute flurry of European diplomacy that includes visits to Paris and Berlin as she prepares for a make-or-break Brexit summit.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still struggling to \nget her EU divorce deal through parliament, May is hoping European \nleaders will agree on Wednesday to delay Brexit for a second time to \nstop Britain crashing out of the bloc two days later. After putting her \nrequest in a letter to European Council president Donald Tusk last week,\n she had phone calls on Monday with him and European Commission chief \nJean-Claude Juncker. May is also visiting German Chancellor Angela \nMerkel and French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, in what her \nspokeswoman said was an attempt to set out “the rationale” for a further\n short delay.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced with political deadlock in London, the EU \nagreed last month to postpone Brexit from March 29 to April 12, and May \nwill ask at a special summit on Wednesday for it to be pushed back again\n to June 30. All other 27 EU leaders must agree and most seem ready to \naccept the idea of another delay to avoid a harmful “no deal” Brexit, \nbut likely for a much longer period than Britain has asked for. In \nanticipation of this, May’s government on Monday reluctantly laid the \nlegal order needed to hold European Parliament elections on May 23.

But\n she is hoping that EU leaders might agree to a flexible delay proposed \nby Tusk, whereby Britain could leave earlier if it agrees a divorce \ndeal, and never hold the elections. “It does not make these elections \ninevitable as leaving the EU before the date of election automatically \nremoves our obligation to take part,” a spokeswoman said. European \nleaders have also asked May to come up with a reason for a delay, with \nFrance in particular warning that it does not want simply to prolong the\n uncertainty.After MPs rejected her divorce deal for a third time, May \nlast week approached main opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to try \nto find a compromise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Corbyn said Monday that he was still \nwaiting for her to alter her approach. “Talks have to mean a movement \nand so far there has been no change in those red lines,” he said, adding\n that his team would speak to her ministers on Tuesday. May says she is \ndetermined to implement the 2016 referendum vote for Brexit, but that \nBritain should only sever ties with its largest trading partner once it \nhas new arrangements in place. Her decision to meet with Corbyn has \nsparked fury in her own Conservative party, with former foreign minister\n and leading Brexit supporter Boris Johnson warning against any \n“surrender”.

Labour wants a new customs union with the EU, \nsomething May has previously rejected as it would stop Britain striking \nits own global trade deals. But in a video-message on Sunday, she said: \n“The longer this takes, the greater the risk of the UK never leaving at \nall.” In Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar expressed optimism \nabout the cross-party process as he met with the EU’s chief Brexit \nnegotiator, Michel Barnier.

“We’re open to extending the \ndeadline to allow these discussions to run their course,” he said. But \nDutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who also spoke to May on Monday, said \nit was “crucial to know when and on what basis the UK will ratify the \nwithdrawal agreement”. He tweeted that any Brexit delay would require \n“assurances from the UK on sincere cooperation”.

May used that \nphrase in her letter to Tusk, saying Britain would continue to act as a \n“constructive and responsible” member state while it remained part of \nthe bloc. Labour is pressing for changes to a political declaration on \nBritain’s future relationship with the EU, which accompanies the \nwithdrawal deal. Barnier repeated that this could be reworked “extremely\n quickly”. Corbyn said May’s government had been open to the idea, “but \nthey haven’t said in which way”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday started a last-minute flurry of European diplomacy that includes visits to Paris and Berlin as she prepares for a make-or-break Brexit summit. Still struggling to get her EU divorce deal through parliament, May is hoping European leaders will agree on Wednesday to delay Brexit for a second time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58700,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58698\/revisions\/58700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}