The European Commission president suggested a further Brexit meeting with prime minister, which was expected tomorrow, may not go ahead as planned.
According to journalist Faisal Islam, he indicated they may now meet “maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow, not on Friday and Saturday because I’m out of town, maybe on Sunday”.
The pair were supposed to reconvene in Brussels tomorrow after another dramatic day for British politics as Brexit crunch talks ended without a divorce deal yesterday, leaving Theresa May facing yet more backlash.
The deal was supposedly “derailed at the 11th hour” by the Democratic Unionist Party, who claim they had not been briefed on the PM’s plan for the Ireland border
At a Westminster press conference today, Mr Dodds revealed that the DUP did not receive the proposals until just before Mrs May’s lunch on Monday with Mr Juncker.
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He said: “Despite several briefings over the course of the last few weeks, we only received written text late yesterday morning.
“We understand this was due in part to delays caused by the Irish Government and the EU negotiating team.
“Upon immediate receipt of that text we indicated to senior Government representatives that it was clearly unacceptable in its current form.”
Irish premier Leo Varadkar said that “the ball is now in London’s court”, after the DUP made clear it would not accept proposals for “regulatory alignment” with the Republic.
In a scathing assessment of the turmoil surrounding the talks, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer said that the “DUP tail is wagging the Conservative dog”.
Mrs May, who is now scrambling to thrash out a deal with the EU while keeping the DUP, which props up her minority government, and her own party onside, may return to Brussels as early as Wednesday to continue talks, a Downing Street official said tonight.
“We’re very confident that we will be able to move this forward,” finance minister Philip Hammond said as he arrived for a meeting with EU counterparts in Brussels.
“Discussions are going on right now and will go on throughout the day.”
A European Commission spokesman said it was ready to resume Brexit negotiations as soon as London signals it is ready.
May wants the EU to open the so-called second phase of Brexit negotiations, about the trading relationship after the United Kingdom’s withdrawal at 2300 GMT on March 29, 2019.
But the EU will only move to trade talks if there is enough progress on three key issues: the money Britain must pay to the EU; rights for EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in the EU; and how to avoid a hard border with Ireland.