EU’s Barnier says Brexit talks far from shifting to future ties

BRITAIN’S exit negotiations with the European Union this week failed to make the kind of progress needed to open talks on their future relationship in October, the bloc’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on Thursday.

However, British Brexit minister David Davis said, the two sides had made “some concrete progress” and there was “high degree of convergence” on the future border with Ireland.

Britain would “rigorously” question how much it had to pay the EU when it leaves, Davis said. However, London may consider paying more than the bare legal minimum given its desire for a future partnership with the bloc, he said.

“We are a country that meets its international obligations and will continue to do so, but those obligations have to be well specified and they have to be real,” Davis told a news conference. “They don’t necessarily have to be legal. We also recognize moral obligations sometimes.”

The EU has said that talks on the future relationship can only start after the other 27 EU governments are satisfied that “sufficient progress” has been made on the terms of Britain’s departure. It is due to leave the union, deal or no deal, in late March 2019.

That gives the two sides less than two years to reach a deal and ratify it. The alternative is a scenario in which Britain crashes out from the EU with little legal clarity for the businesses and citizens affected.