EU demands UK pays £50bn divorce bill before trade talks

EU demands UK pays £50bn divorce bill before trade talks

NEWS: goo.gl/a3kAcQ



The standoff between ministers and EU leaders over the £50billion Brexit divorce bill deepened today amid warnings there will be no trade talks until we agree to pay up.

French president Francois Hollande has told Theresa May directly that the break-up terms must be settled before the future relationship can be picked over.

The message, in a phone call between the premiers this morning, came as European leaders gathered in Malta to hammer out their approach to the looming negotiations.





But Brexit Secretary David Davis has made clear there is no chance of the UK paying anything like the figure that has been mooted.  

Bitter rows erupted immediately after Theresa May formally invoked Article 50 - the two year process of cutting ties - yesterday.

She called for discussions on the divorce bill to run in parallel with talks on future trade links, saying there must be a 'comprehensive' deal.



But German Chancellor Angela Merkel bluntly rejected the idea.

'The negotiations must first clarify how we will disentangle our interlinked relationship,' Mrs Merkel said.

'Only when this question is dealt with can we, hopefully soon after, begin talking about our future relationship.'



Mr Hollande has warned that Brexit will be 'painful' for the UK, and insisted this morning that there would be not compromise over the order in which issues are dealt with, according to the Elysee Palace.

'The President indicated that the talks must at first be about the terms of withdrawal, dealing especially with citizens' rights and obligations resulting from the commitments made by the UK,' a spokesman said.

'On the basis of the progress made, we could open discussions on the framework of future relations between the UK and the EU in accordance with the letter from Mr Tusk.'

The European Parliament's chief negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, fueled the row by claiming it was 'very naive' to think a divorce and trade deal would be done at the same time.



'You need to do the withdrawal agreement and you have to have an agreement on what I should call the 'general terms' of your future relationship,' he told Sky News.

'Not on the detail, not on the content - that is impossible in 14-15 months to do so. We need the whole transition period of two, three, four years to fill in the content of this new association agreement for the future.'

The intervention followed Mr Verhofstadt's remarks yesterday in which he accused Mrs May of 'blackmail' - and also patronised her by suggesting he was holding back because she is a 'lady'.

'I tried to be a gentleman towards a lady, so I didn't even use or think about the use of the word blackmail,' he said. 'I think the security of our citizens is far too important to start a trade-off of one and the other. Both are absolutely necessary in the future partnership without bargaining this one against the other.'



The influential centre-right EPP group from the European Parliament has been meeting at a luxury hotel in Valetta today.

The 1970s hit We Are Family was played over the sound system as the politicians arrived.

Joseph Daul, the French leader of the EPP, said: 'The exit bill must be paid in full by the United Kingdom.'

Chairman Manfred Weber added that the bloc 'will not allow the cherry-picking we saw over the past few decades'.

EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said he believed the Brussels club would be 'better' without Britain.

'Brexit is not the end of everything, but we must make it a beginning of something that will be new, stronger and better,' he said.

Mr Davis tried to play down the tensions today, saying the government was not trying to 'blackmail' the bloc by threatening to withdraw security cooperation if we do not get a good deal.

He also said he was 'not expecting' the EU to demand a payment anything like the £50billion that has been mooted.

Mr Davis portrayed the responses in the EU as posturing, stressing that negotiations were only just getting under way.

'I spent all of yesterday afternoon on the telephone talking to my opposite numbers in the Parliament, in the commission, around all the member states,' he told ITV's Good Morning Britain.

'Virtually all of them said spontaneously, it's a very positive letter, the tone was good, and so on.'

He added: 'One part of the deal is the justice and home affairs strand, we currently have arrangements for exchanging information, for arrest warrants, for Europol and all those things.

'We will need to replace that with something else because that will go when we leave the European Union.'

Mr Davis said it was a 'negotiation' and 'the other side might want to change things too'.

The Cabinet minister, who will spearhead the looming talks with the EU, said Mrs May's letter had not been a 'threat'.



'This is a statement of the fact that this will be harmful for both of us... if we don't get a deal. It's an argument for having a deal,' he said.