The British Government has embarked on a diplomatic offensive by land, sea and air to try to unlock the Brexit negotiations in the face of the European leaders ‘ summit held in Brussels on Thursday and Friday this week. This Monday, Theresa May and his Brexit minister, David Davis, dine in Brussels with Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the Commission, and Michel Barnier, EU negotiating chief. This is the second private work dinner held since the beginning of the negotiations. The first, in April, was an epic disaster: a leak to the German press accounted for Juncker’s astonishment at the alleged naivety of the prime minister, who made him leave Downing Street “ten times more sceptical” than on arrival.
Before traveling to the Belgian capital, May had spoken on the phone on Sunday with German chancellor, Agela Merkel, and on Monday afternoon he called on French President Emmanuel Macron and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. For his part, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson received Sunday to eight foreign ministers from EU countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and moved their convictions that advancing the Negotiations is also important for the interests of the twenty-seven.
A change in the mood of the British negotiating team has been evident since May’s speech in Florence a month ago. The conviction is that the prime Minister took political risks in her Florence speech and that it is time for the twenty-seven to move the card. London believes that France and Germany are preventing conversations from advancing to a second phase by requiring a concretion in the economic terms of divorce that British negotiators consider cannot be further defined until the Future agreement.
