EUROPEAN Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said he is suffering from “Brexit fatigue” and warned he is “not very optimistic” a no-deal situation can be avoided.
Speaking the morning after his talks with Theresa May in Brussels, he said UK withdrawal from the EU without a deal would have “terrible economic and social consequences”.
“Brexit is deconstruction, it is not construction. Brexit is the past, it is not the future,” he told the European Economic and Social Committee in the Belgian capital yesterday.
“If no deal were to happen, and I cannot exclude this, this would have terrible economic and social consequences in Britain and on the continent, so my efforts are oriented in a way that the worst can be avoided. But I am not very optimistic when it comes to this issue,” he said.
“In the British Parliament every time they are voting, there is a majority against something, there is no majority in favour of something,”
He added: “I have something like a Brexit fatigue ... This is a disaster.”
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His downbeat comments came as Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox visited Brussels for talks with chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier, who was also holding separate discussions with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Meanwhile, Philip Hammond described Brexit as “a large black cloud” hanging over the UK economy, and said a no-deal departure would be “extremely bad” for the UK.
In an interview with BBC One’s Breakfast a day after three Tory MPs resigned from the party over Brexit, the Chancellor was repeatedly asked whether he would quit the Cabinet if May went for no-deal.
He replied: “I will always do what I believe is in the best interests of the country.”
Asked if a no-deal Brexit would be in the UK’s best interests, he said: “No, definitely not.”
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In a joint statement issued after Wednesday’s meeting, the PM and Juncker acknowledged they were in a race against time to reach a workable deal before the scheduled date of Brexit on March 29. The statement said the PM and Juncker “will review progress again in the coming days, seized of the tight timescale and the historic significance of setting the EU and the UK on a path to a deep and unique future partnership”.
May is eager to get movement on the backstop before the Brexit issue returns to the Commons for a series of votes on February 27, when MPs are expected to mount a bid to delay Brexit beyond March 29.
The backstop arrangements would see the whole of the UK remain in a customs union with the EU and Northern Ireland following some single market rules until a wider trade deal is agreed, in order to prevent the need for checkpoints on the Irish border.
The PM and Juncker are due to talk again before the end of the month. May will be attending a two-day EU-League of Arab States summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh starting on Sunday. Around 20 EU leaders are expected to take part, including German chancellor Angela Merkel and Irish premier Leo Varadkar, and May is due to hold a series of one-to-one meetings on the margins of the summit.
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