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BRUSSELS: Britain must broker its deal to leave the EU by October 2018, the bloc’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Tuesday, warning that time for talks was running out.
Frenchman Barnier added that an interim deal to soften the blow of Britain’s departure was “difficult to imagine” unless it quickly told Brussels what it wanted from a Brexit deal.
Despite the tight new timeline Prime Minister Theresa May pledged a “red, white and blue Brexit” following Britain’s shock June 23 referendum vote to leave the European Union.
“Time will be short. It’s clear that the period of actual negotiations will be shorter than two years,” Barnier said in his first news conference since his appointment by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.
Speaking in a mix of French and English, former Finance Minister Barnier said the EU was “ready” for May to trigger the official two-year divorce process as promised in March 2017.
But Barnier said that much of that time would be spent getting any deal approved by the remaining 27 EU countries plus the European Parliament and then British MPs.
“All in all there will be less than 18 months to negotiate — once again that is short,” added Barnier, once dubbed the most dangerous man in Europe by a British newspaper when he was the EU’s financial services commissioner.
“Should the UK notify the council by the end of March ’17 as Prime Minister May said she would, it is safe to say that negotiations could start a few weeks later and an Article 50 agreement reached by October 2018.”
Barnier, who is touring EU capitals to hear their views on Brexit, urged Britain to “keep calm and negotiate,” echoing a famously stoic British World War II slogan.
But he also warned Britain that “cherry-picking is not an option” and that it “can never have the same rights and benefits” outside the EU.