Britain has just four weeks left as a member of the EU. Or maybe not. Staying weeks, months, even years longer is the talk of London, but such ideas are getting a frosty hearing on the continent.
When Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the European Commission, confessed this week to “a certain Brexit fatigue” and his negotiator, Michel Barnier, said what Britain needed was not time but decisions, they were reflecting a broad impatience that means Britain will struggle to get more than a short delay.
It also bodes ill for so-called “remainer” Britons hoping they might halt the whole process.
One of the remainers’ staunchest friends in Brussels, the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt, summed up the new chill across the English Channel by complaining: “The union has been taken hostage by Brexit already for too long.
“The UK has had almost two years to make up its mind. Now it is time to decide. A deal, no deal or stay,” he added, ruling out an extension much beyond EU legislative elections on May 26.
An envoy from one major member states said yesterday: “The more time elapses, the less patience there is and the less we want to help. People are fed up.”
Unable to get her deal for a smooth withdrawal through a British parliament torn between looser ties to the EU and wanting to remain, Prime Minister Theresa May conceded this week that lawmakers could oblige her to ask Brussels to let Britain stay beyond a negotiating deadline of March 29.
Having insisted that the threat of inflicting economic chaos on Europe by leaving without a deal remains vital to persuade the other 27 states to make concessions on the Irish border, May now says a short extension of a few weeks might be acceptable. But with her Labour opponents now rallying to calls for a new referendum to stop Brexit altogether, British MPs do not rule out pressing to put the process on hold much longer.
However, EU diplomats say that a suggestion to let Britain remain a full EU member until even, say, the end of next year may be as much intended to spook hardline, pro-Brexit MPs into accepting May’s deal for fear of ending up stuck inside the EU.
Nearly three years ago, after Britons voted to leave, many EU leaders would have seized any chance to put the genie back in the bottle. But fear and sadness have given way to a renewed confidence that others will not follow and to worries about remaining tied to such a divided member state. Reuters