Sweden’s Top Brexit Negotiator Says Now Up to U.K. to Find Deal
Sweden’s Top Brexit Negotiator Says Now Up to U.K. to Find Deal
(Bloomberg) --
Sweden’s European Union Minister Hans Dahlgren said the withdrawal deal hammered out with the U.K. isn’t up for renegotiation, but he held the door ajar for the British to come up with a plan that satisfies both sides to avoid an abrupt divorce.
Speaking in an interview on Friday after a meeting with U.K. Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay, Dahlgren said the situation is “serious” because the new British government has increased the risk of a hard exit.
“All EU member states have the same view that the withdrawal agreement that we have negotiated is not up for renegotiation,” he said by phone. But the British prime minister has said he “looked forward to developing something in the next few weeks. We’ll have to wait and see what that means, it’s up to the Brits to come up with a proposal.”
New U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been making the rounds this week trying to convince Europeans to change a withdrawal deal made by his predecessor. The impasse threatens to propel the U.K. out of the European Union on Oct. 31 without the protection of a transition period.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested it may be possible to find a solution within the next month if Johnson could provide realistic ideas, but French President Emmanuel Macron later signaled a harder line.
The Brexit deal, which took 19 months for Theresa May and the 27 other EU governments to agree on, was rejected three times by the British Parliament. Johnson is demanding the EU scrap the backstop, the mechanism designed to keep the Irish border free of checks after Brexit that’s a key part of the current agreement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rafaela Lindeberg in Stockholm at rlindeberg@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonas Bergman at jbergman@bloomberg.net
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