(Bloomberg) -- The European Union's deputy Brexit negotiator told German lawmakers that she's skeptical talks with the U.K. will be able to move on to trade in October, according to two people present at the closed-door briefing.
Sabine Weyand briefed a special session of the European Affairs Committee of the lower house, or Bundestag, in Berlin on Monday and told lawmakers that no movement had been made in the key areas under discussion, those who attended the hearing said.
Given the scant advance made so far, Weyand said there's no indication that the fourth round of negotiations scheduled to begin on Sept. 18 will yield any more progress than the third, according to one of those present. As a result, she doesn't currently see EU leaders agreeing when they next meet to turn to the U.K.'s relationship with the bloc after Brexit, both of those attending said.
Weyand's readout of the negotiations being conducted in Brussels paints a bleak picture for U.K. government ministers aiming to shift from the terms of the divorce to Britain's future relationship with its biggest market. U.K. Brexit Secretary David Davis has called for greater “flexibility and imagination” from the EU to allow the talks to proceed more rapidly.
Speaking to Parliament in London on Tuesday, Davis said the EU is using “time pressure as a pressure point to put up against Britain.” He called it “a pressure tactic to make us pay” as he predicted the dispute over the Brexit financial settlement would last until the talks end.
U.K. Consequences
Weyand, who is deputy to the European Commission's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, told the Bundestag committee that she doesn't see any progress being made before Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party conference at the beginning of October, according to one of those present. In any case, the EU summit scheduled for Oct. 19-20 was never a binding date to agree to move on to the next phase of negotiations, Weyand said.
The EU commission said it had no comment on Weyand's appearance.
“I don't think the British were very realistic from the beginning,” Ingrid Arndt-Brauer, a Social Democratic Party lawmaker who chairs the Bundestag Finance Committee, said in an interview in Berlin. “No one made calculations beforehand, no one properly explained the consequences to the people. Now they want to keep things they think are worth preserving and don't want to do things that have to be done.”
Weyand also told lawmakers that elections to the European Parliament scheduled in May 2019 mean that there will be no prolongation of talks beyond the cutoff date in March of that year, one of the participants said. She said that she doesn't see any institutional trick that could allow for an extension.
Asked by the committee about confusing messages coming from different members of May's cabinet, and whether she thought it was a deliberate strategy to sow confusion, Weyand said the EU was unable to interpret the British position, according to one of those present.
--With assistance from Ian Wishart and Tim Ross
To contact the reporter on this story: Birgit Jennen in Berlin at bjennen1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Tony Czuczka
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