May to spend weekend in talks to break Brexit impasse
By Frank Prenesti
Date: Friday 18 Jan 2019
(Sharecast News) - Prime Minister Theresa May was preparing to spend her weekend drumming up support domestically and internationally as she looked for a way to break the Brexit impasse.
May was contacted at the end of the week by EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council counterpart Donald Tusk as well as German chancellor, Angela Merkel and Dutch prime minister,.
She told Rutte there would be no delay to the UK's departure from the EU on March 29. He in turn said: "I don't see how the deal can be tweaked."
"She is really expecting Brexit to go ahead on 29 March," Rutte told his weekly news conference.
"It (a no-deal Brexit) will cause disruptions and we are trying to minimise those," he said. "We need to look at the facts and prepare for all scenarios. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst ... time is running out. 29 March is only 10 weeks away."
A spokesman for Juncker said: "President Juncker spoke to prime minister May on the phone. It was an exchange of information on both sides. The two agreed to stay in touch."
May will return to parliament on Monday to make a statement to MPs and lay a motion for a vote on 29 January.
The European Commission said on Friday that the UK would have to hold European elections in order to choose its representatives if Brexit is delayed beyond 2 July.
The possibility that the government might finally decide on such a delay had triggered a debate on whether Britain should take part in the European parliamentary elections.
European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters on Friday that the UK still had not requested for such delay in the deadline.
"We ... as the guardian of EU treaties, suggest caution with any suggestion that the right of EU citizens to vote in the European Parliament elections, according to the rules that are applicable, could be called into question," Schinas said.
"We have a legally composed European Parliament which requires directly elected MEPs from all member states at the latest on the first day."
Meanwhile, the Democratic Unionist Party could support a soft Brexit that would have the whole of the UK aligned with the EU's customs union in a bid to avoid the Irish backstop, according to a newspaper.
Leading figures in the Northern Irish party are considering backing a Norway-style deal to try and break the current Brexit impasse, The Times reported.
This could help change Prime Minister Theresa May's mind after her Brexit plan was shot down in flames in the Commons earlier this week, losing a vote by the biggest margin in almost 100 years.
The DUP, which is supplying its 10 MPs' votes in order to prop up May's government in a confidence-and-supply deal, felt her deal was inadmissible purely because it would cause a divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
One DUP MP told the Times that the party's priority had been to try to tweak the current withdrawal agreement, but with the scale of May's defeat in the meaningful vote week, they were "going to have to look at other options that could include a softer Brexit as long as it applied to the whole of the United Kingdom".
Tory Brexiteers have counted on the support of the DUP to face down Brussels against the backstop option and risk a no-deal Brexit.
Nevertheless the DUP are not keen on a no-deal scenario since it could cause Northern Ireland to suffer an economic hit from the end of tariff-free trade with the republic.
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