Jean-Claude Juncker has reportedly said May is ‘deluded’ and ‘in another galaxy’ after a disastrous #brexit dinner between the two. The dinner between the EU Commission President and UK Prime Minister took place in London last Wednesday, April 25th, with senior members of the UK and EU negotiating teams also present.
German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine has now published an article showing just how badly the dinner went. Jeremy Cliffe, Berlin Bureau Chief at the Economist, posted an incredible summary:
1) May had said she wanted to talk not just Brexit but also world problems; but in practice it fell to Juncker to propose one to discuss.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
2) May has made clear to the Commission that she fully expects to be reelected as PM.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
3) It is thought [in the Commission] that May wants to frustrate the daily business of the EU27, to improve her own negotiating position.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
4) May seemed pissed off at Davis for regaling her dinner guests of his ECJ case against her data retention measures – three times.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
5) EU side were astonished at May’s suggestion that EU/UK expats issue could be sorted at EU Council meeting at the end of June.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
6) Juncker objected to this timetable as way too optimistic given complexities, eg on rights to health care.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
7) Juncker pulled two piles of paper from his bag: Croatia’s EU entry deal, Canada’s free trade deal. His point: Brexit will be v v complex.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
The original article specifies these two documents are several thousand pages and weigh six kilograms together. Juncker warned a divorce treaty and a future free trade agreement with the UK would be at least as extensive.
8) May wanted to work through the Brexit talks in monthly, 4-day blocks; all confidential until the end of the process.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
9) Commission said impossible to reconcile this with need to square off member states & European Parliament, so documents must be published.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
10) EU side felt May was seeing whole thing through rose-tinted-glasses. “Let us make Brexit a success” she told them.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
11) Juncker countered that Britain will now be a third state, not even (like Turkey) in the customs union: “Brexit cannot be a success”.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
12) May seemed surprised by this and seemed to the EU side not to have been fully briefed.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
13) She cited her own JHA opt-out negotiations as home sec as a model: a mutually useful agreement meaning lots on paper, little in reality.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
14) May’s reference to the JHA (justice and home affairs) opt-outs set off alarm signals for the EU side. This was what they had feared.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
15) ie as home sec May opted out of EU measures (playing to UK audience) then opted back in, and wrongly thinks she can do same with Brexit
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
16) “The more I hear, the more sceptical I become” said Juncker (this was only half way through the dinner)
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
17) May then insisted to Juncker et al that UK owes EU no money because there is nothing to that effect in the treaties.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
18) Her guests then informed her that the EU is not a golf club
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
19) Davis then objected that EU could not force a post-Brexit, post-ECJ UK to pay the bill. OK, said Juncker, then no trade deal.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
20) …leaving EU27 with UK’s unpaid bills will involve national parliaments in process (a point that Berlin had made *repeatedly* before).
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
21) “I leave Downing St ten times as sceptical as I was before” Juncker told May as he left
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
22) Next morning at c7am Juncker called Merkel on her mobile, said May living in another galaxy & totally deluding herself
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
23) Merkel quickly reworked her speech to Bundestag to include her now-famous “some in Britain still have illusions” comment
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
24) FAZ concludes: May in election mode & playing to crowd, but what use is a big majority won by nurturing delusions of Brexit hardliners?
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
25) Juncker’s team now think it more likely than not that Brexit talks will collapse & hope Brits wake up to harsh realities in time.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
26) What to make of it all? Obviously this leak is a highly tactical move by Commission. But contents deeply worrying for UK nonetheless.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
27) The report points to major communications/briefing problems. Important messages from Berlin & Brussels seem not to be getting through.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
28) Presumably as a result, May seems to be labouring under some really rather fundamental misconceptions about Brexit & the EU27.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
29) Also clear that (as some of us have been warning for a while…) No 10 should expect every detail of the Brexit talks to leak.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
30/30) Sorry for the long thread. And a reminder: full credit for all the above reporting on the May/Juncker dinner goes to the FAZ.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
Theresa May later dismissed the article as ‘Brussels gossip’.
