Reuters, Brussels :
Brexit Secretary David Davis arrived in Brussels on Monday to launch talks he hoped would produce a “new, deep and special partnership” with the EU in the interest of Britons and all Europeans.
Beaming as he met the European Union’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier at the EU executive’s Berlaymont headquarters, the veteran campaigner for Britain to quit the bloc said he aimed for a “positive and constructive” tone in the talks, adding: “There is more that unites us than divides us.”
Barnier, a former French minister, has voiced impatience in the past that Britain has taken nearly a year to open talks. Looking more somber than his British counterpart, he said he hoped they could agree a format and timetable on Monday.
His priority, he said, was to clear up the uncertainties which last June’s Brexit vote had created. He and Davis are due to give a joint news conference in the evening.
Almost a year to the day since Britons shocked themselves and their neighbors by voting on June 23 to cut loose from their main trading partner, and nearly three months since Prime Minister Theresa May locked them into a two-year countdown to Brexit in March 2019, almost nothing about the future is clear.
Even May’s own immediate political survival is in doubt, 10 days after she lost her majority in an election.
Officials on both sides play down expectations for what can be achieved in one day. EU diplomats hope this first meeting, and a Brussels summit on Thursday and Friday where May will encounter – but not negotiate with – fellow EU leaders, can improve the atmosphere after some spiky exchanges.
Davis’s agreement to Monday’s agenda led some EU officials to believe that May’s government may at last be coming around to Brussels’ view of how negotiations should be run.
May’s election debacle has revived feuding over Europe among Conservatives that her predecessor David Cameron hoped to end by calling the referendum and leaves EU leaders unclear on her plan for a “global Britain” which most of them regard as pure folly.
While “Brexiteers” like Davis have strongly backed May’s proposed clean break with the single market and customs union, finance minister Philip Hammond and others have this month echoed calls by businesses for less of a “hard Brexit” and retaining closer customs ties.
Brexit Secretary David Davis arrived in Brussels on Monday to launch talks he hoped would produce a “new, deep and special partnership” with the EU in the interest of Britons and all Europeans.
Beaming as he met the European Union’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier at the EU executive’s Berlaymont headquarters, the veteran campaigner for Britain to quit the bloc said he aimed for a “positive and constructive” tone in the talks, adding: “There is more that unites us than divides us.”
Barnier, a former French minister, has voiced impatience in the past that Britain has taken nearly a year to open talks. Looking more somber than his British counterpart, he said he hoped they could agree a format and timetable on Monday.
His priority, he said, was to clear up the uncertainties which last June’s Brexit vote had created. He and Davis are due to give a joint news conference in the evening.
Almost a year to the day since Britons shocked themselves and their neighbors by voting on June 23 to cut loose from their main trading partner, and nearly three months since Prime Minister Theresa May locked them into a two-year countdown to Brexit in March 2019, almost nothing about the future is clear.
Even May’s own immediate political survival is in doubt, 10 days after she lost her majority in an election.
Officials on both sides play down expectations for what can be achieved in one day. EU diplomats hope this first meeting, and a Brussels summit on Thursday and Friday where May will encounter – but not negotiate with – fellow EU leaders, can improve the atmosphere after some spiky exchanges.
Davis’s agreement to Monday’s agenda led some EU officials to believe that May’s government may at last be coming around to Brussels’ view of how negotiations should be run.
May’s election debacle has revived feuding over Europe among Conservatives that her predecessor David Cameron hoped to end by calling the referendum and leaves EU leaders unclear on her plan for a “global Britain” which most of them regard as pure folly.
While “Brexiteers” like Davis have strongly backed May’s proposed clean break with the single market and customs union, finance minister Philip Hammond and others have this month echoed calls by businesses for less of a “hard Brexit” and retaining closer customs ties.
