Merkel and Macron Compare Notes to Keep Control of Brexit Talks
Merkel and Macron Compare Notes to Keep Control of Brexit Talks
(Bloomberg) -- When Theresa May arrives in Paris on Tuesday she’s unlikely to bring any surprises for French President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron will probably have already been briefed on the British leader’s latest thinking on Brexit after her meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier in the day, European officials said.
With a summit looming on Wednesday that will go a long way to deciding the fate of Britain’s efforts to leave the European Union, Macron and Merkel are coordinating their moves every step of the way, the officials said, despite their contrasting messages in public. May is due to sit down with Merkel in Berlin at noon before she flies 550 miles for talks with Macron at 6 p.m.
In the Brexit saga, Macron has often played bad cop to Merkel’s good. It’s the French president who, despite the potential political impact back home, signaled he’s willing to see the U.K. depart without a deal to end the uncertainty hanging over the rest of the EU. The British Parliament’s failure to approve the Brexit deal struck with the EU in November, “puts us on the path to a hard exit,” Macron said last week.
Merkel, meanwhile, said she’d fight until the very end to stop a disorderly departure. “We want to do everything,” Merkel said in Ireland last week, “to ensure there is no disorderly U.K. exit -- and we’ll expend a lot of strength to that end.”
While the differences in their positions are real, officials say, they’ve been coordinating closely behind the scenes throughout the process.
Back in June 2016 Merkel published the same message as Francois Hollande, Macron’s predecessor, on the day after the Brexit vote. The two leaders had also agreed common wording if the U.K. had voted to stay in, and that pattern has continued under Macron.
They may have superficial differences to reflect their different domestic audiences, but Paris and Berlin work to ensure they carry the same fundamental message, one European official said. May’s meetings with the two leaders on Tuesday will be prepared or reviewed by both Berlin and Paris, the official said.
--With assistance from Arne Delfs.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net;Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Emma Ross-Thomas
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