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TEHRAN, August 7 -Two days after the Brexit Secretary’s incendiary article in the Mail on Sunday, European Union leaders have initiated their own political and diplomatic offensive against Britain’s new Tory government.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) -EU officials have been widely quoted in the international media as saying there is currently no basis for “meaningful discussions” with the UK over Brexit.
One EU negotiator has reportedly said: “we are back where we were three years ago”.
This public relations offensive by EU officials is, in part, a response to the Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay’s combative article in the Mail on Sunday, where he bluntly told the chief EU negotiator, Michel Barnier, to “go back to your EU masters” for a new “mandate”.
Now the EU officials behind Barnier are bluntly telling Barclay, and his boss Boris Johnson, that there is effectively no new “mandate”.
The two sides are trapped in an apparently intractable dispute over the Irish border “backstop”.
The backstop is a position of last resort to ensure a frictionless border on the island of Ireland. If implemented, it would oblige Northern Ireland to remain aligned with the rules and regulations set by the EU’s single market.
Johnson reportedly sent his own European envoy to Brussels last week as part of a last ditch attempt to persuade EU officials to compromise on the backstop issue.
David Frost, who is a former UK ambassador to Denmark, reportedly met high-ranking EU officials, including Clara Martinez Alberola, the head of cabinet for the European Commission president, and Stéphanie Riso, a senior official in Barnier’s negotiations taskforce.
Frost’s failed mission to Brussels likely prompted leading Tories, notably Stephen Barclay, to go on the offensive against the EU.
With a no-deal Brexit looking increasingly inevitable, the two sides are likely to use the next couple of months to secure advantages post-Brexit.
To that end, the European Commission has made clear it will not be performing additional contingency planning to deal with the “fallout” before October 31, the deadline for the UK to exit the EU.
The Financial Times, on July 31, interpreted this EU decision as a ploy to avoid giving Johnson’s hard right Tory government a “soft” hard landing in the immediate aftermath of Britain’s disorderly exit from the union.
By doing this, the EU effectively throws the ball into Britain’s court and forces the Tories to invest billions of pounds into “turbo-charging” no-deal Brexit plans.
Source: presstv
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