THERESA May has just eight days to pass a Brexit deal or she’ll have to choose between crashing out of Europe with no deal or signing up to a long delay, the EU has warned.
On Tuesday night the Prime Minister said she wanted a short delay lasting until May 22. This would give MPs more time to find a deal with enough support to get through the Commons, but would mean the UK didn’t need to stand in elections to the European Parliament.
But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker insisted there would be no more short delays, and set an “ultimate deadline” of April 12 “for the approval of the withdrawal agreement by the House of Commons”.
“If it has not done so by then, no further short extension will be possible,” he added. “After April 12, we risk jeopardising the European Parliament elections, and so threaten the functioning of the European Union.”
Juncker said a no deal was “now a very likely scenario”.
“It is not the outcome I want,” he said. “But it is an outcome for which I have made sure the European Union is ready. We have been preparing since December 2017. We have always known that the logic of Article 50 makes a no deal the default outcome. We have long been aware of the balance of power in the House of Commons.”
He warned that the UK would “be affected more than the European Union because there is no such thing as a ‘managed or negotiated no-deal’ and there is no such thing as a ‘no-deal transition’”.
Whatever happened, he said, the UK would still need to pay its £39 billion divorce bill, find a solution to prevent a border on the island of Ireland, and keep promises made to EU citizens living in the UK.
“No deal does not mean no commitments, and these three issues will not go away,” Junker added.
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