(Bloomberg) -- Theresa May has chosen Florence as the backdrop for her attempt to win European Union support for her Brexit negotiating position.
In a speech in the Italian city on Sept. 22, the prime minister will argue that Britain can still work closely with the EU after leaving the bloc. It was billed by May's office as an opportunity to “to update on Brexit negotiations so far,” capping a series of position papers published in August and September.
“The prime minister wanted to give a speech on the U.K.'s future relationship with Europe in its historical heart,” her spokesman James Slack told reporters. “The U.K. has had deep cultural and economic ties spanning centuries with Florence, a city known for its historical trading power. As the U.K. leaves the EU we will retain those close ties. As the prime minister has said on many occasions, we are leaving the EU, not Europe.”
While May's office talks about setting the scene, European officials are looking for specifics, especially on how the U.K. will approach the question of settling financial obligations to the EU. That has been one of the key sticking points in negotiations so far.
Seeking Specifics
But the prime minister could be reluctant to give details on such a contentious subject in the fortnight before she has to appear at her Conservative Party's annual conference. The euroskeptic party, already smarting from May's disastrous election campaign this year, is unlikely to welcome financial concessions to Brussels.
The speech is also likely to reflect the radically altered circumstances in which May finds herself eight months after she first set out her negotiating strategy. Since then she has suffered humiliation at the hands of the voters, and cabinet members have begun openly debating the government's negotiating options.
On Tuesday, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said that the government now wants a “status quo” transition period after the U.K. leaves the EU with continued access to the single market and customs union. In August Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who last year promised voters that Brexit would mean an end to payments to the EU, suggested he was ready to agree to sending money to the bloc to cover commitments already made.
Prosecco Politics
The prime minister will fly to Florence after a brief visit to Canada and then head to the United Nations in New York. She will be speaking in the cradle of the Italian Renaissance four months after European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivered his own speech in the city. Juncker told his audience that “slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe” and then switched to talking in French.
May's top diplomat made his own contribution to Anglo-Italian relations last year, when he told Italy's economic development minister, Carlo Calenda, that the country would support giving Britain access to the EU's single market “because you don't want to lose prosecco exports.”
“He basically said, ‘I don't want free movement of people, but I want the single market,'” Calenda said afterward. “I said, ‘No way.' He said, ‘You'll sell less prosecco.' I said, ‘OK, you'll sell less fish and chips, but I'll sell less prosecco to one country and you'll sell less to 27 countries.' Putting things on this level is a bit insulting.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills, Robert Jameson
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