European Council President Donald Tusk has set a deadline of the beginning of December for Britain to make further movement on its Brexit divorce bill and the future of the Irish border.
Speaking after talks with Theresa May in Gothenburg, Mr Tusk said the EU had completed the internal work necessary to give the green light for talks on trade and transition to begin at the next European Council summit in Brussels on December 14-15.
But he said that “much more progress” was needed from the UK on two of the three key issues in withdrawal talks in order to break the deadlock which has prevented the move to the second phase of negotiations which the UK is seeking.
“We will be ready to move on to the second phase already in December, but in order to do that we need to see more progress from the UK side,” said Mr Tusk. “While good progress on citizens’ rights is being made, we need to see much more progress on Ireland and on the financial settlement.”
He said he had told Mrs May that “this progress needs to happen at the beginning of December at the latest”.
Speaking at the conclusion of an EU jobs summit, Mr Tusk warned: “If there is not sufficient progress by then, I will not be in a position to propose new guidelines on transition and the future relationship at the December European Council”.
Mr Tusk added that he and Mrs May had agreed to meet again this coming Friday.
Mrs May added: “We are agreed that good progress has been made but there is more to be done, that we should move forwards together towards that point where sufficient progress can be declared.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here