UK Brexit secretary to EU: Ball is in your court
UK has ‘shown a lot of flexibility,’ says Dominic Raab.
The U.K. has “made compromises” and “showed ambition” in divorce negotiations, and it’s now time for the EU to do the same, according to Britain’s Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab.
Speaking to a group of reporters ahead of this week’s informal EU summit in Salzburg, Raab said the meeting “will be an important milestone — a stepping stone if you like — to show we’ve actually got the contours of an agreement on principles to continue the final weeks of these negotiations,” according to Germany’s Welt newspaper.
He added that the U.K. has “shown a lot of flexibility and we have been very pragmatic. So I think this is the moment to see that matched … The ball is a little bit in the other court now.”
The Brexit secretary said he doesn’t think the challenge of the open issue of the Irish border “is intrinsically insurmountable but it will require flexibility.”
“Our position remains that we wouldn’t see a customs border down the Irish Sea and that the economic and the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom needs to be respected,” Raab said, according to the Irish Times, but admitted he is “not confident” that this will happen. He said the EU’s initial proposals on the matter “weren’t in our view workable.”
Raab also said his government would not support a second Brexit referendum. “Even if that’s what people want to do, it’s difficult to see how it could be done in time, and we wouldn’t facilitate it,” he said.
Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-brexit-secretary-dominic-raab-to-eu-ball-is-in-your-court/