Brexit: UK gives up on hope of Merkel's help
By Nicholas Watt
Newsnight political editor
For well over a decade British political leaders have
expended enormous amounts of energy trying to divine the thoughts of Angela
Merkel.
Britain has calculated that it is worth making a special
effort with the German chancellor on the grounds that she leads the pre-eminent
power in Europe.
Throw in a classic German instinct about the need to temper
French protectionism, goes the thinking, and Britain has a friend.
David Cameron can testify, however, that the Merkel
calculation has produced mixed results after she rejected his idea of an
emergency hand brake to limit EU migration.
Even with this varied track record, British political leaders
have once again assumed that Merkel would help out. Iain Duncan Smith told me
on Newsnight recently that "Mutti" would deliver in the Brexit
negotiations.
There are some encouraging signals from Berlin. Last week
the German chancellor moved to repair the damage after the Salzburg summit when
she spoke of how she hopes Brexit can be negotiated in a "friendly
way" to keep the UK as close as possible to the EU.
But Angela Merkel did also question a central element of the
prime minister's Chequers plan when she told German business that an outside
country cannot join only one part of the single market. Theresa May wants to
follow a common rule book for goods and agri-products while opting out of the
free movement of people and the single market on services.
Amid this background senior members of the cabinet are now
reaching a settled view about Merkel: she is highly unlikely to come riding to
the rescue over Brexit.
They believe that, at best, she is now so weak domestically
she is unable to make any bold moves. At worst Merkel is such a stickler for EU
rules she will not allow any compromises on the core principles of the EU for a
"third country", a non member.
Ministers now believe that the UK is entering the Brexit
endgame with a potentially dangerous power play at the heart of the EU. The
fear is that Emmanuel Macron is now the foremost EU leader with a difference:
the French president is politically unrestrained by the German chancellor.
One senior cabinet minister told me that, for all his talk
during his trip to Britain of forging a bespoke deal for the UK, Macron has
spotted a chance to advance French interests. Macron also has an interest in
making Brexit look painful as he seeks to cast himself as the only European
leader capable of defeating populism.
Macron regards Brexit as the British version of populism
surging across Europe. In his eyes he is the only mainstream leader to have
defeated a populist candidate in a presidential election. And on the
anniversary of his Sorbonne speech, in which he diagnosed the problem and set
out his vision to combat populism, he wants to ensure there can be no rewards
for those offering what he calls simple solutions.
One weary cabinet member told me: "The EU has a real
problem if they dismiss Brexit as populism. It means they will never understand
what is going on in their own countries."
So Britain enters the final phase of the negotiations with a
French president keen to use Brexit to show what he regards as the folly of
governing through easy rhetoric. In the background stands a German chancellor
who has reportedly been heard to mutter that Britain must be made to suffer a
bit to show you cannot leave the club and keep all the benefits.
Theresa May will be hoping to limit the suffering to "a
bit". Brexiteers will say: seize your chance to break free from leaders
who fail to understand the newly emerging world around them.
Theresa May unveils new UK immigration system
The plan is designed to cut low-skilled migration to the UK
from the European Union.
By TOM MCTAGUE 10/2/18, 12:29 AM CET Updated 10/2/18, 12:41
AM CET
BIRMINGHAM, England — Theresa May has pledged to overhaul
Britain’s immigration system, ending freedom of movement and replacing it with
a new visa regime which treats EU citizens no differently to those from
elsewhere in the world, No. 10 Downing Street said Monday evening.
In a statement, the U.K. prime minister said a single new
system would be introduced to reduce low-skilled immigration from the EU.
A long-standing home secretary before she became prime
minister in 2016, May has long advocated tighter restrictions on immigration.
She is one of the Conservative party’s most vocal supporters of a target to
reduce immigration to the tens of thousands a year, something that dates back
to her predecessor David Cameron’s 2010 manifesto, though a target that’s been
consistently missed.
The announcement, though widely expected in both in the U.K.
and in Brussels, risks further antagonizing EU leaders ahead of a crucial final
few months of Brexit negotiations. The plan will also likely face criticism
from those who argue the U.K. should use the immigration system to negotiate
preferential trade deals once it has left the European Union.
According to the statement, the U.K. will introduce new
“e-gate visa checks” for tourists and business travelers coming to the country
for short stay trips from “low risk” countries.
In words released alongside the statement, May said: “Two
years ago, the British public voted to leave the European Union and take back
control of our borders. When we leave we will bring in a new immigration system
that ends freedom of movement once and for all. For the first time in decades,
it will be this country that controls and chooses who we want to come here.”
“It will be a skills based system where it is workers’
skills that matter, not where they come from. It will be a system that looks
across the globe and attracts the people with the skills we need,” she said.
“Crucially it will be fair to ordinary working people. For too long people have
felt they have been ignored on immigration and that politicians have not taken
their concerns seriously enough.”
An official government white paper detailing how the new
system will work will be published later this autumn, ahead of a formal
Immigration Bill next year, according to the statement. Those wanting to stay
in the U.K. long term will have to prove they have the skills to “meet
Britain’s needs.”
“Applicants will need to meet a minimum salary threshold to
ensure they are not competing for jobs that could otherwise be recruited in the
U.K.,” the press release said. “Successful applicants for high-skilled work
would be able to bring their immediate family but only if sponsored by their
future employers.”
The new system will not include a cap on student visas.
Authors:
Tom McTague
Brussels rejects Theresa May's plea to break Brexit deadlock
EU response comes as Jean-Claude Juncker claims people in UK
are only now finding out about scale of Brexit problems
Jennifer Rankin and Daniel Boffey in Brussels
Mon 1 Oct 2018 19.14 BST First published on Mon 1 Oct 2018
17.29 BST
EU diplomats have rejected Theresa May’s conference pitch
that Brussels must move first to break the deadlock over negotiations as
Jean-Claude Juncker said British people were only “finding out now” about the
scale of the problems caused by Brexit.
The European commission president told an audience in
Germany that he regretted that the voters had not been properly informed ahead
of the Brexit referendum in 2016. He claimed that UK ministers were only now
discovering the costs.
“What I really regret is there was no real Brexit campaign
in terms of actual information,” Juncker said. “In Great Britain the people are
finding out now, also British ministers and ministers on the continent, they’re
finding out now how many questions it actually poses, all the things that we
need to resolve.”
Juncker said British tourists’ pets would face four days of
quarantine, and flights could indeed be grounded despite claims to the contrary
emanating from Whitehall.
“So if I start to even ask myself what’s going to happen to
the 250,000 dogs and cats that leave the European continent every year,”
Juncker told an audience in Freiburg. “Right now they just pass through
customs, all these dogs and cats coming to mainland Europe every year. There
are lots of people in Europe who just want people and animals to cross borders
but I think we’re just going to have four-day quarantine and if you want to go
to Brittany for eight days for vacation then maybe you need to leave the dog or
the cat at home but maybe you’ll just stay home altogether.”
He added: ‘“What’s going to happen to air traffic in Europe?
If everything goes wrong British planes will not be able to land on the
European continent; people don’t know that. Somebody should’ve told them that
beforehand.”
The comments made in at a “citizens dialogue” event came as
diplomats in Brussels raised doubts over a possibility of a substantive
counter-offer being made by the EU.
While the British government insists the ball is in the EU’s
court in the talks, European diplomats speak of a more complex diplomatic
dance, in which both sides publish papers during an intense negotiating period
leading up to a crunch summit on 18 October.
Officials also repeated warnings that the EU would not
accept the economic part of May’s Chequers plan, fearing it would hand British
business a permanent competitive advantage over EU rivals.
In interviews before the conference, the prime minister said
the EU had to tell the British government what “detailed concerns” it had about
her Chequers compromise plan. “If they’ve got counter-proposals, let’s hear
what those counter-proposals are,” she told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.
On Monday the Brexit secretary Dominic Raab told Tory
delegates that the EU’s “theological approach” allowed no room for serious
compromise. “If the EU want a deal, they need to get serious. And they need to
do it now.” In an interview with the Sun, he said the EU had not offered
credible alternatives to the UK government proposals. “The ball is in their
court.”
Rejecting this characterisation, an EU source said both
sides had to move if the talks were to progress: “In a way the ball is just as
much in the UK’s court as the EU’s. We are at a point in the negotiations when
neither side can say ‘the ball is in your court’. If the UK doesn’t pick up the
ball, we will.”
A senior source said the Brexiter campaign to “chuck Chequers”,
was driving May to a free-trade agreement with the EU – the Canada-style deal
that the prime minister has rejected as not good enough. “I can’t see how May
the week after [party conference] can say: ‘You wanted to chuck Chequers. Well,
we can stay in the customs union and single market.’ I think the dynamics are
driving the UK to an FTA rather than an upgraded form of Chequers.”
The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, is drafting a
non-binding political declaration on the future relationship with the UK. A
senior diplomat said “counter-proposal would be “too strong a word” to describe
this document, which has been planned for a long time.
Linked to that text, Barnier is drawing up “improved”
proposals on the Irish backstop. The backstop is the European commission’s
fallback plan to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, but May has
said no British prime minister could ever accept Barnier’s version, which would
keep Northern Ireland subject to many EU rules.
The text of both documents is being tightly guarded by the
European commission, leaving EU member states in the dark.
Meanwhile the EU awaits the British government’s own
counter-offer on the Irish backstop, after May promised alternatives that
“preserve the integrity of the UK”, in an angry speech after her bruising
experience at last month’s Salzburg summit.
The British government’s complaints that the EU has not
explained its reasons for rejecting the economic and customs plan of Chequers
has been given short shrift in Brussels. “[May] said the EU had never
explained, which is in fact not true,” said one diplomat.
According to Brussels insiders, Barnier gave Raab a detailed
briefing of the EU’s objections to the common rulebook, the centrepiece of the
Chequers’ economic plan, allowing free movement of goods between the EU and UK.
Barnier’s briefing notes, a three-page paper of “defensive
points”, explain the commission’s problems with the common rulebook, across
different industries. “The UK proposal would lead to a diversion of trade and
investment in the UK’s favour and to the disadvantage of member states’
business,” states the unpublished document.
It outlines how the UK could gain an advantage in some
industries, if it only had to follow EU product standards, rather than broader
social and environmental protection rules. In the European steel industry, for
example, only 1% of the cost of regulation is linked to EU product standards,
while 99% comes from EU rules on energy and climate change, according to the
document.
The document also explains why the commission is ready to
hand an economic advantage to Northern Ireland, by keeping it in the customs
union and subject to many (but not all) single market rules. EU insiders have
worried that its Northern Ireland plan is a form of “cherry-picking”, but
conclude it is necessary to preserve peace, while the size of the region means
there is no serious risk. “With a population of 1.8 million, Northern Ireland
is much less of a competitive threat than the 60 million UK.”
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