European Union leaders agreed on Thursday to grant British Prime Minister Theresa May a new Brexit deadline of Oct. 31, diplomats told Reuters after French President Emmanuel Macron opposed summit efforts to give her another year.
Summit chair Donald Tusk tweeted that an extension had been agreed upon but gave no details as he went to brief May on the outcome and seek her necessary agreement to the deal.
The late-night deal means Britain will not crash out of the bloc on Friday and gives May more than the three months she had asked for to build a parliamentary majority behind the withdrawal treaty she negotiated with the EU last year.
But Macron’s push for a June Brexit, and strong opposition to other leaders’ preference for a much longer extension that might increase the chances of Britain changing its mind to stay in the bloc, meant the meeting ended up with the October compromise.
Oct. 31 would correspond to the end of the five-year mandate of the present EU Executive Commission.
Leaders would meet again in June, EU diplomats said, to assess the situation. Britain could have left by then if May succeeds in building a coalition for her deal with the Labour opposition — though there is no sign of agreement yet.
In order to continue as an EU member beyond June 1, May has agreed to organize British elections to the European Parliament on May 23, though it is still unclear if that vote will go ahead and how far it might turn into a virtual second referendum on EU membership that some hope could mean a British cancellation of Brexit.
Late-night wrangling
Other leaders had all but ruled out pitching Britain, and parts of the EU economy, into chaos on Friday. But a drive by Macron to keep London on a tight leash with an extension no longer than to June saw the emergency summit bogged down in late-night wrangling as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others argued the merits of granting up to a year.
As at a summit last month that put back Brexit for two weeks, several EU diplomats said May failed to persuade her peers that she could definitely break the paralysis of repeated failures to ratify the treaty within the coming months.
But Macron had told reporters on arrival that he was concerned that letting Britain stay in the bloc longer, notably if it takes part in elections to the European Parliament on May 23-26, posed a serious risk to the functioning of the Union.
“Nothing can be taken for granted,” the French president warned.
French officials said the EU faced “blackmail” by hard-line pro-Brexit potential successors to May, such as Boris Johnson. The thinking was that they might try to sabotage decision-making, so any longer EU membership must come with tighter commitments from Britain to play fair than were so far drafted into a summit accord.
An aide to Macron warned that France could even be ready to let Britain crash out without a treaty to avoid legal limbo and provide a transition to new trading terms: “Not everything is preferable to a no-deal. A no-deal situation is a real option.”
Laughter with Merkel
However, Merkel has urged the bloc to do all it can to avoid such disruption. She said before leaving Berlin that she favored a delay of “several months” for May, who has pledged to quit if hard-core Brexit supporters in her own Conservative Party drop objections to her “soft Brexit” and help ratify the deal.
Keen to ease tension, Merkel had broken the ice as talks began by showing May a photo montage on a tablet of both wearing similar jackets when addressing their parliaments earlier in the day. It provoked mutual laughter as other leaders joined in.
As talks wore on beyond midnight, with May patiently waiting elsewhere in the building for word on her nation’s fate, Macron rallied support for his concerns about a long extension.
May said on arrival that she did not want a long delay: “I want us to be able to leave the European Union in a smooth and orderly way as soon as possible,” she told reporters.
Her EU peers, however, are skeptical about her ability to break the deadlock soon and discussed a proposal by Tusk of a “flextension” of nine months to a year. This, some argued, could increase pressure on May’s pro-Brexit critics to back her deal rather than risk Brexit fizzling out.
EU leaders are exasperated with May’s handling of a tortuous and costly divorce that is a distraction from ensuring the bloc can hold its own against global economic challenges.
Across from the summit venue, the EU executive celebrated its part in funding a global project that produced the first picture of a black hole, prompting no shortage of ironic comments on social media about the juxtaposition.
Blogger Eliot Higgins tweeted: “We’re now more certain about what black holes look like than what Brexit looks like.”
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