European Parliament backs red lines resolution for Brexit negotiations The European parliament has overwhelmingly voted in favour of a tough negotiating stance towards the British government in the Brexit negotiations. MEPs in Strasbourg approved a resolution setting out the parliament’s red lines in the coming talks by 516 votes to 133, with 50 abstentions, comfortably exceeding the two-thirds majority sought by parliament leaders to show unity behind their approach. The resolution backs “phased negotiations” in the divorce proceedings, going against the wishes of Theresa May’s government, which would like exit talks and discussions of a future trade arrangement to happen in parallel. Talks on such a deal can also only occur once London has come to a settlement with the EU on its financial liabilities and the rights of citizens. The parliament leaves open the possibility that UK citizens might be able to individually apply to keep the rights they currently enjoy, and suggests Ukraine’s association agreement might be a future model for an EU-UK trade deal. However, the resolution also says that any transition arrangements to cushion the UK’s departure, such as tariff-free access to the single market, can only last a maximum of three years after the UK departs. – The Guardian “You began by telling us that we have to pay a bill! A cool 52 billion sterling!” Nigel Farage MEP blasts the European Commission’s stance on Brexit – BrexitCentral’s YouTube No parallel Brexit and trade talks, EU’s Barnier insists – Reuters EU’s Barnier ‘twiddles on phone’ in Brexit debate – BBC News European Parliament’s ‘red lines’ on Brexit – BBC News MEPs vow to protect Good Friday agreement – The Times (£) EU negotiator Barnier: UK parallel negotiations “very risky approach” – BrexitCentral’s YouTube Guy Verhofstadt: UK will one day rejoin the EU – BrexitCentral’s YouTube EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker warns ‘everybody will lose’ if Brussels and UK don’t secure a Brexit deal – The Independent European Parliament rejects string of amendments on protecting Gibraltar, controlling immigration and ending domination of EU courts – The Sun Theresa May says post-Brexit Britain can inherit up to 50 existing EU trade agreements with the rest of the world… Theresa May yesterday claimed Britain will be able to inherit as many as 50 existing EU trade agreements with the rest of the world after Brexit. Setting up the first major clash with Brussels, the PM claimed it “will be possible” to simply cut and paste deals with countries such as South Korea, Mexico and Jordan. But she triggered a backlash yesterday by appearing to admit it could take longer than the two years of divorce talks to finalise a new free trade deal with the EU. She told Sky News: “Lets look at the whole question of where we end up. At the end of this negotiation, will we have looked at both withdrawal and the future relationship? “That’s what’s important. That’s what I’m asking for and that’s what I believe increasingly we will see.” – The Sun …as hardliners stay ‘Zen’ over Theresa May’s softer Brexit mantras… During her three-day visit to the Middle East Theresa May has been subtly softening her stance on Brexit — but the Eurosceptic anger that might be expected has failed to materialise. Instead, an intensive behind-the-scenes party management exercise, allied to the desire on the part of Conservative MPs to present a united front, has so far prevented any backlash. “We are very relaxed with the prime minister,” said the Eurosceptic Conservative Peter Bone. “I’m extremely supportive.” Mrs May’s suggestion in Saudi Arabia that free movement of EU citizens could continue for a limited transition period after Brexit was a significant move, heralding a new flexibility. She has further conceded that a UK-EU trade deal might not be signed until after the Brexit deadline of 2019. But Mr Bone said the prime minister had made it clear free movement would ultimately come to an end and declined to criticise the suggestion it might be extended for a few more years. – FT (£) Theresa May softens stance on Brexit roadblocks – FT (£) The ‘Brexit betrayal’ poses a hazard for Theresa May – Sebastian Payne for the FT (£) PM has given two indications she is willing to compromise on previously hard position – FT (£) …and Iain Duncan Smith says she must rule out any change to Gibraltar’s status in Brexit deal Theresa May must make protecting Gibraltar’s rights a red line in her Brexit deal, a former Tory leader has insisted. Iain Duncan Smith turned up the pressure on the PM to rule out any change in the Rock’s status after we leave the EU. So far, she has pledged only to protect Gibraltar’s sovereignty. But Mrs May is facing mounting demands to rule out a bid by Brussels chiefs to allow Spain a veto on the British territory’s future relationship with the EU too. Speaking in Washington DC yesterday, IDS accused Spain of using Brexit talks to “make a land grab for Gibraltar”. Heaping praise on Gibraltarians’ courage throughout three centuries, Mr Duncan Smith added: “The British are entwined with them by countless of these vital historical threads. Any deal must protect them or there should be no deal. – The Sun JPMorgan won’t actually move many jobs out of UK after all, admits boss in Brexit U-turn The head of US bank JPMorgan said on Tuesday the bank is not planning to move many jobs out of Britain in the next two years in a softening of tone on the likely impact from Brexit. Jamie Dimon had said in a previous speech to employees in Bournemouth last year that as many as 4,000 of the bank’s 16,000 jobs based in Britain may have to move. Even though his stance appears to have moderated Mr Dimon said on Tuesday the bank is preparing for a hard Brexit. – The Independent London and Brussels urged to agree Brexit transition deal to protect banks London and Brussels have been urged to strike a Brexit transition deal by one of Europe’s top financial lobby groups amid warnings banks will be unprepared for the UK’s secession from the EU. The two-year deadline for the UK to negotiate the terms of its departure from the EU is not long enough for banks, investors and financial regulators to prepare for the new rules that will come into force following Brexit, the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) has cautioned. – Daily Telegraph Productivity overtakes 2007 levels after decade of pain Britain’s workers are at last producing more in each hour of work than they were at the end of 2007, after almost 10 years of poor productivity. A spurt in productivity growth in the final quarter of 2016 came as the economy accelerated, finally surpassing the hourly output levels seen before the financial crisis. Productivity is the key to rising pay and living standards, as workers can earn sustainably higher wages if they produce more output. But productivity has stagnated since the financial crisis. – Daily Telegraph Growing exports help UK economy stabilise Britain’s economy picked up pace in March as the powerful services sector performed strongly, raising hopes that the slowdown in the previous month could be a blip. Stronger demand from the US and other countries indicates that the weaker pound is helping exporters sell more goods and services abroad. Consumers have defied rising inflation to keep on spending, supporting economic growth. IHS Markit’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to 55 in the services sector in March, up from 53.3 in February. – Daily Telegraph Services upbeat as growth hits 3-month high Growth in the dominant services sector hit a three-month high in March, beating expectations of a slowdown, according to one of the City’s most closely watched economic indicators. The IHS Markit purchasing managers’ index for the sector that makes up 80 per cent of the economy, ranging from hotels and restaurants to cinemas, theatres and financial services, rebounded in March on the back of stronger domestic demand. – The Times (£) UK tourism booms as fall in pound draws visitors At Bicester, a small town in Oxfordshire, the announcements at the railway station are made in English, then Mandarin, then Arabic. The town is home to one of Britain’s biggest tourist draws, Bicester Village, a discount shopping outlet staffed by white-gloved porters in red jackets. More than a million people have passed through the local train station since an hourly service from London began in 2015, according to Chiltern Railways. It is one of the most visited place in the UK by Chinese tourists. The latest official tourism figures showed that spending by overseas tourists in the UK was 15 per cent higher in January than a year earlier and visits were up 9 per cent. Visits from North America were up 19 per cent. – FT (£) Lord Mandelson claims multibillion pound Brexit bill will be ‘small change’ – and urges May to pay up quickly The New Labour heavyweight urged Theresa May to settle the bill “sooner rather than later” to get the Brexit negotiations off to a good start. The former Cabinet minister, who served as an EU trade commissioner for over four years, also called on the Prime Minister to face down the “wild men” in her own party who are happy to see the UK fall out of the bloc without a trade deal. But it is his comments on the Brexit bill which are likely to enrage Eurosceptics, particularly as some in Brussels are suggesting the Government could have to pay up to £50bn to cover its existing obligations to the EU. – Politics Home Theresa May in Saudi talks for London to host world’s biggest share flotation of £1.6 trillion Theresa May is in talks with Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company to use the London Stock Exchange for the biggest share flotation in history. Saudi Aramco is expected to be valued at £1.6 trillion when it sells five per cent of its shares on the open market. The flotation will be hugely lucrative to the city that hosts it, when shares worth millions of pounds will change hands. On Tuesday evening, Mrs May held a meeting with the Aramco chairman Khalid Al-Falih, who is also Saudi Arabia’s energy minister. Significantly, she was accompanied by Sir Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, the only British businessman in the room during any of the meetings Mrs May has held in the kingdom. – Daily Telegraph European Commission launches Brexit website A new European Commission website is devoted to Brexit and will include everything from the latest speeches to official documents as they are published. The sub-section of the wider Commission website for now has a limited array of content but includes an organization chart and directs users to the Twitter account of Michel Barnier, the EU chief negotiator, for the latest news. The website makes a clear hierarchical distinction between Barnier and his deputy Sabine Weyand, and the other 27 staff members listed on the taskforce organization chart. The Commission internally refers to its Brexit taskforce as “TF50” and suggests that inquiries about its work be sent to a general email address. – Politico Europe Daniel Hannan MEP: The EU knows winning Gibraltar back for Spain is far less important than a great Brexit deal There are two parallel processes at work as Britain seeks a different relationship with the EU. There is a noisy, public engagement – carried out partly in newspapers – in which leaders on both sides look for wins. And there is a diplomatic engagement, in which the officials, whose job is to optimise these situations, seek the best outcome. The row over the status of Gibraltar neatly illustrates the disconnect. It was one of just two jarring notes in an otherwise courteous and constructive response by the European Council to Britain’s triggering of Article 50. – Daniel Hannan MEP for IBTimes Dominic Raab MP: There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the Brexit negotiations Between careless talk of war and the Brexit Committee’s gloomy critique of life outside the EU, whisper quietly, but the EU’s opening position is far better than expected. There are 722 days left of Brexit negotiations. Every day, someone, somewhere, will find something to gasp about. The media will provide an echo chamber for the most theatrical histrionics. This week, reference in the EU’s negotiating guidelines to needing Spanish agreement on Gibraltar got opinion fired up. Yet the idea that Spain would hold a deal to ransom is implausible. The UK Government would never countenance some neo-imperial carve up of Gibraltar, and pressure from the rest of the EU on Spain not to scupper a deal would be enormous. If the EU wanted to give Britain good reason to leave with ‘no deal’, and clear domestic support at home, it would be by endorsing such ugly realpolitik. I suspect Spain insisted on the reference, having read the reasonable text on Northern Ireland’s border and the UK Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus, nervous that they would come under domestic political attack unless Gibraltar got a mention, too. – Daniel Hannan MP for ConservativeHome Ross Clark: EU leaders like Guy Verhofstadt are proving Brexit was the right choice Only the EU, an organisation with four presidents, could have two ‘chief negotiators’ charged with agreeing the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU. I am not sure, then, how seriously to take the figure of Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian MEP who has been appointed the European Parliament’s chief negotiator. If we agree something with him, do we then have to agree it with Michel Barnier, the EU’s other ‘chief negotiator’, and if they can’t agree, which ‘chief’ is really in charge? All I know is that what we have seen from the EU’s leaders in months since Britain voted to leave the EU is a good reminder of why the country made that decision. Far from proving itself to be the open, liberal organisation it claims to be it has revealed itself to be a closed, protectionist bloc which doesn’t want really want to do business with an ex-member and, worse, doesn’t want us to do business with the outside world, either. No wonder British voters decided that we were better off out. – Ross Clark for The Spectator Peter Foster: How to pull the rug from under the EU and give Britain the upper hand in one killer move imagine, just for a moment, the look on Mr Barnier’s face if Britain did pull a €60 billion rabbit out of the hat – or at least, agreed to a much more substantial figure than the current numbers being thrown around on the British side? Some set the figure at €6 billion-€9 billion, tops, the British treasury is briefing out €20 billion, but crazy though it might sound at first, there are some very good tactical reasons why the British would be wise to surprise Europe on the upside. Firstly, that €60 billion is really not, in the grand scheme of things, that much money. “Piffling”, is how one senior Brexiteer described it before it became a hot-button political issue in these coming talks. If the payments are spread over a number of years and they buy Britain political goodwill and better access to the EU single market, it will be money well spent. Secondly, as a matter of negotiating tactics, it immediately takes the winds out of EU sails on an issue which they have been spoiling for a fight for from the very start. – Peter Foster for the Daily Telegraph (£) Asa Bennett: Many Britons voted Brexit to cut immigration – they fear betrayal in Theresa May’s talk of ‘control’ Take back control. These three powerful words drove home Vote Leave’s key message last year: outside of the EU, Britain could manage its own borders, its own laws and – above all – its own future. Every one of the 17.4 million Leave voters could find something they liked about this vision, and now Theresa May has to get on with delivering it. The Prime Minister may not have fought alongside the official Brexit campaign, but she has to respect the outcome of the referendum they helped come to pass, as it has given her a mandate – the “biggest ever given to a British government” in David Davis’ words – to negotiate the terms of Britain’s exit. – Asa Bennett for the Daily Telegraph (£) Simon Nixon: Brexit means Brexit? It may mean being half-in, half-out of the EU Mrs May’s goal of a “deep and special partnership” covering everything from trade to security sounds a lot like an Association Agreement of the sort that the EU already has in place with many neighbouring countries. Ukraine, for example, negotiated an Association Agreement with the EU that covers security and foreign policy, as well as a deep and comprehensive trade agreement. This deal allows Ukraine tariff-free access to much of the EU single market for goods in return for compliance with EU rules, overseen by a bilateral commission, but it isn’t part of the customs union, allowing it to strike its own trade deals. Ukraine and the UK may not have much in common but it provides a template of sorts, which has the advantage of being provided for under the EU treaties. – Simon Nixon for The Times (£) Allie Renison: How Britain can help businesses prepare for Brexit ‘We are well-informed as to the problems,” the chairman of the Irish Parliament’s Brexit committee wrote recently – “now is the time to focus on solutions”. It is an attitude that the UK must hope is replicated across the political classes of the EU as they begin to hammer out their negotiating position for the upcoming Brexit talks. There is reassurance to be found in the fact that Irish lawmakers have moved so far from where they were before the referendum, when Brexit was vociferously opposed. We need politicians from all 27 remaining member states to reach the same place, accept that Brexit is happening, and show a desire to negotiate an agreement that works as well as possible for both sides. – Allie Renison for The Times (£) Michael Deacon: Give Britain a good deal… or we won’t eat your chocolate: how Nigel Farage enraged the EU (again) This is only a guess, but something tells me the European Parliament wasn’t very pleased to see Nigel Farage. “Your lies have caused absolute chaos in the United Kingdom!” shouted Gianni Pittella, chair of the European Socialists and Democrats. “Mr Farage is an irresponsible demagogue!” sniffed Gabriele Zimmer, chair of the European United Left. By proceeding with Brexit, MEPs glowered, the UK was making a serious mistake. Estaban Gonzalez Pons, of the People’s Party in Spain, said the British had “got it wrong”, and were “going to commit self-harm”. Guy Verhofstadt, a Brexit negotiator, predicted that the British would return to the EU, once they’d seen Brexit “for what it is: a cat fight in the Conservative party”. Manfred Weber, of the European People’s Party, derided Theresa May over Article 50 (“It took nine months to write a letter of six pages!”), and said the UK “has to accept” that the EU will take “a tough negotiating position”. This last remark won hearty applause. – Michael Deacon for the Daily Telegraph (£) Brexit in briefing The Australian diplomat longing for a post-Brexit trade deal – Alexander Downer for PoliticsHome Why economic forecasts get the impact of Brexit wrong – Philip Booth for the Institute of Economic Affairs New Today editor’s great Brexit adventure – Steerpike for The Spectator Coffee House blog If you were an EU leader, would you trust us? – David Aaronovitch The Times (£) Hilary isn’t helping – Douglas Carswell’s blog Euroscepticism takes centre stage in French presidential TV debate – Daily Telegraph KLM calls for Brexit compromise while preserving `EU philosophy’ – Bloomberg UK financiers battle government over taxes as Brexit looms – Bloomberg Berlin embraces its own hard Brexit – Politico Europe According to a new index, the EU27 countries fall into three groups: hard-core, hard and soft – The Economist Rajoy wants ‘broad, deep’ trade deal between EU and UK – Politico Europe