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Brexit talks to start Monday – POLITICO.eu

European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier | Olivier Hoslet/EPA

The top EU and UK negotiators will begin as scheduled in Brussels, despite British political turmoil.

By Florian Eder

6/15/17, 3:37 PM CET

Updated 6/16/17, 3:04 PM CET

U.K. Brexit SecretaryDavid Davis and the EUs chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier agreed on Thursday that talks on Britains departure from the European Union will begin on schedule on Monday June 19, two EU sources familiar with the mattertoldPOLITICO.

TheU.K. government and the European Commission confirmed the start date, with the Brits saying the talks would be led by Davis.

The agenda for Mondays talks is yet to be finalized, according to an EU source familiar with the preparations. The meeting is scheduled to run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Brussels time, of course, the source said.

Barnier will speak English but wants the option ofswitching toFrench, so translation will be provided, the source said.

The timetable for the talksgetting started had been thrown into doubt by last weeks election setback for U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May. Her Conservative Party lost its parliamentary majority in a snap election that she had called to seek a stronger mandate for the Brexit negotiations.

However, British officials have insisted since the vote that they would stick to the timetable, which would enable May to attend asummit of EU leaders next Thursday and Friday with the negotiations already under way. Brexit is on the agenda of the summit, as well as the agenda of ministerial meetings earlier in the week to prepare for leaders talks.

Confirmation that the negotiations will start on time came as the EUs deputy Brexit negotiator Sabine Weyand held talks with U.K. officials in Brussels on Thursday a meeting described by a European Commission official as talks about talks.

Mays EU adviserOliver Robbins was in Brussels on Monday for a working lunch with theEUs chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier.

However, further details about the talks were thin on the ground.

At a high-level panel discussion on Brexit at the 2017 Prague European Summit,Stefaan De Rynck, an official in the European Commissions Brexit negotiation team, noted that in Barnier the EU has a stable, mandated, accountable chief negotiator. It was unclear if the use of the word stable was a dig at Theresa May, whose campaign mantrawas strong and stable.

De Rynck, in response to a question, said he did not yet see any need to lower the political temperature around the talks. On the EU side, he said, Were going to be rational about this, cool-headed, trying to find the common interests and see where the differences lie.

Martin Povejil, the Czech Republics ambassador to the EU, who also sat on the panel, said the EU was ready to talk. And while Brexit posed many challenging issues, Povejil said he expected the EU27 to remain unified on the most fundamental positions. Indivisibility of the four freedoms, Povejil said. If we stick to that, we are on the same side.

European Commission First President Frans Timmermans told the Prague eventthat the EU would be happy to see the U.K. change its mind and stay in the bloc. Asked if he supportedstatements by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schuble that the EUs door remained open, Timmermans said: By all means; we didnt ask the U.K. to leave.

David Herszenhorn, Quentin Aris and Tom McTague contributed to this article.

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Brexit talks to start Monday - POLITICO.eu

June 17th, 2017

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The European Union is popular again. But there are reasons for Brussels to worry. – Washington Post

It's true what they say: Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

That's one key takeaway from a new Pew Research Center poll on Europeans' attitudes toward the European Union. Since Brexit, the attitude toward the institution has improved in many countries, including the U.K. In Poland, for example, nearly three-quarters of the population say that they have a favorable opinion of the European Union. It's about as high in Germany and Spain. About half of all Britons say they support the E.U., up from 40 percent a year ago.

A couple other key findings: The European project is most popular among Europe's youngest residents. A whopping 73 percent of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 29 support the organization. Just 58 percent of Europeans 50 and older feel the same way. People on the left are more likely to like the E.U. than those who call themselves conservative. Also of note:A majority of those surveyed say Brexit will be bad for the U.K. And a majority of Britons say their leaving will be bad for the European project. They're more divided on what that means for the U.K.

Unsurprisingly, Greeks (who've suffered under austerity measures) have the worst opinion of the governing body. Just a third of the country views the E.U. favorably.

Support for the E.U. coincides with renewed economic confidence across the continent. The euro zone economy grew significantly in 2016, a trend that's continued. Unemployment has dropped to the single digits, and job creation accelerated to a nine-year record at the beginning of this year.

It's not all good news for Brussels, though. As the report's authors explain, while few citizens on the European continent are eager to see their own country depart the E.U., many want the chance to have their voice heard through their own referendum on E.U. membership. That's due, largely, to frustrations about the refugee issue and the E.U.'s economic management. More than half of all Europeans also want their countries to be able to make their own trade deals with other countries. And nearly three-fourths want their countries to control future migration from outside the E.U.

Immigration is a particularly thorny issue for the European Union. Millions of people have come from Syria and North Africa to Europe during the past two years, many making their way by boat or over dangerous land crossings. In 2015, at least a million migrants made their way to Europe, a huge jump from 2014. That's led to increased concern about crime, terrorism and displacement.

Now, many Europeans want their home countries to have more of a say about who can come and who can stay. More than 80 percent of all Hungarians say their government should make their own decisions about who can and can't immigrate to their country. About 77 percent of Poles; 75 percent of the French and three quarters of all Germans agree. The numbers are nearly as high in Italy, Spain and Greece.

Majorities inthecountries surveyed also want their governments to have more control over one of the founding freedoms of the E.U. the free movement of people.In 2015, about 1.4 million people migrated from one E.U. state to another. In the Pew survey, most people said they wanted their governments to be able to set their own limits.

But giving countries more autonomy on immigrationand trade would run counter to the European Union's core mission.If they back away from the principle itself, that's a very severe blow to the bedrock assumptions of what the E.U. is for, said Joshua Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It means the European project as it was originally conceived is really being rethought.

Negotiating trade deals separately would also, he said, run counter to the project's central raison d'tre.The European Union is about Europe acting as a union. That's what it means. You can't really suggest that it would be better moving forward for countries to negotiate their own deals, he said. If that's the case, the European Union is redundant.

The Pew survey also found widespread antipathy toward political parties in the respondents' own countries. As the report's authors write:

Few political parties in Europe enjoy widespread appeal. The few that buck this trend tend to be more established parties in Western European nations that have not suffered as much economically in the years since the euro crisis. Sympathy for the frequently Euroskeptic parties to the right of the political spectrum is limited: In no country surveyed does more than about a quarter of the adult population hold a favorable view of parties such as Frances National Front, the Netherlands Party for Freedom (PVV) or Britains UK Independence Party (UKIP).

A note on methodology: Over about six weeks in March and April, 9,935 people were surveyed in France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

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The European Union is popular again. But there are reasons for Brussels to worry. - Washington Post

June 16th, 2017

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Brexit: European support for EU has increased since UK decided to leave, finds research – The Independent

Support for the European Union has rebounded dramatically in most major member countries afterBrexit,although the majority of citizensbelieve they should also have a referendum, new research has found.

The study by US think tank, thePewResearchCenterfound that people had a positiveview of the EU innineout of the 10 countries.

Even in the UK,54 per cent of people approved of the 27 nation bloc, although 40 per cent disapproved.

The only country with a negative view of the EU was Greece which is still struggling to meet the terms of the deal made with the troika the European Central Bank, the Eurogroup and the International Monetary Fund for bailout loans in 2010, 2012 and 2015.

A decade on from the country's financial crisis anda quarter of the workforce is still unemployed and nearly a third live in poverty.

The findings come as pro-EU leaders are beginning to feel a renewed sense of confidence and believe that the tide of right-wing populism which has spread across Europe over the last few years is starting to ebb.

In France, where support for the EU has risen 18 points to 56 per cent in favour. It followed anoverwhelmingly victory bypro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron in the presidential runoff against far-right Front National (FN) candidate Marine Le Pen.

The victory was compoundedover the weekend,when the FN saw its share of the vote drop significantlyin parliamentaryelections.

The party won around13 to 14 per centof the vote, which compared poorly withthe 21 per cent Ms Le Pen won in the presidential race.

FN is on course to win between one and 10 seats in the National Assembly after the 18 June run-off while Mr Macrons centristLa Republique En Marche! Party and itsMoDem party ally areexpected to winof 445 out of 577 seats.

The report shows support for the EU is highest in countrieswith anti-EU leaders.

For instance, only 13 per cent of Hungariansbelieved the country should leave the EU even though their prime minister, Viktor Orban, has been a thorn in the side of his partners in Brussels.

Mr Orban called refugees entering Europe a poison last year and opposed the EUs plan to use a mandatory quota system to distribute migrants around the 28-nation bloc.

But the report also said immigration is still an issue which people believe they should have more control over.

Seventy fourper cent of people surveyed across the 10 countries felt their national government should be able to do more to control immigration from outside the EU and 66 per cent said it should have more power to restrict migration within the bloc.

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Brexit: European support for EU has increased since UK decided to leave, finds research - The Independent

June 16th, 2017

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