Yahoo Finance May calls EU leaders after cross-party talks to break Brexit impasse
Theresa May is set for talks with the EU’s two most senior figures after holding cross-party talks at Westminster in a bid to resolve the Brexit impasse.
The British prime minister has arranged phone calls for Friday afternoon with European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and European council president Donald Tusk.
Tusk hinted earlier this week that the “only positive solution” to the impasse is to cancel Brexit.
If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?
— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) January 15, 2019
Their latest talks come at the end of a week in which May saw the Brexit deal she brokered with Brussels rejected by MPs before her government survived a vote of confidence.
She responded by inviting leaders of opposition parties to 10 Downing Street to discuss a way forward, although Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has refused to meet until a no-deal Brexit is taken off the table.
READ MORE: May tries to break Brexit stalemate with Juncker – by text message
Unusually, a European commission spokesperson stressed that May had requested the call. It comes just a day after it was revealed May and Juncker hadn’t spoken since the ‘meaningful vote’ but had been in contact by text message.
Asked what development now required the pair to speak by phone, the spokesperson said: “There is nothing new for me to report on. I think it’s good at this juncture that the president and prime minister are scheduled to speak.”
May also spoke to Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and German chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday. May is making the calls to report to EU leaders the outcome of the cross-party talks she has held and could result in the prime minister heading to Brussels next week.
At a press conference on Friday, Rutte told Dutch journalist that he was clear with May that the existing deal “cannot be tweaked.”
Meanwhile, speculation that the UK is set to request an extension to Article 50 intensified as legal advice about British participation in May’s European elections was revealed.
It has been assumed that any extension could last only until next July, which is when the next European parliament term is set to begin.
Lawyers have now told the European parliament that an extension could be granted beyond that date without the UK needing to elect MEPs.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna welcomed the development as confirmation “that European parliament elections are no barrier to holding a people’s vote.” However, a European commission spokesperson shot down that idea.
“We suggest caution with any suggestion that the right of EU citizens to vote in the European Parliament elections, according to the rules that are applicable, could be called into question,” they told journalists in Brussels.
READ MORE: Barnier: EU ready to renegotiate Brexit deal if UK ‘shifts red lines’
“A legally composed European parliament requires directly elected MEPs from all member states at the very latest of the on the first day of the beginning of the term of the parliament, which this time is the 2nd of July.
“This is the legal situation and we would prefer, as guardians of the treaty, to stay with the legal order.”
Nigel Farage has also confirmed he would stand in any fresh European elections, but for a new party rather than UKIP, the party he once led but recently quit in protest over its links with far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
“I’m looking at various political options,” he said. If this happens, I’ll make sure that there is a political party there that I can be part of.”
READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: UK MEPs will keep expenses for three months after Brexit at £400,000 cost
