The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, increased the pressure on British Prime Minister Theresa May today, stating that a lot still needs to be done in order to reach an agreement on the first phase of Brexit negotiations in December. "Time is ticking. I hope we will be in a position to get an agreement on divorce provisions at the European Council (EC) in December, but there is still work to be done," Juncker said on arrival at a European summit on social issues in Gothenburg, Sweden. . Theresa May is among the 25 EU leaders present at the Gothenburg summit, out of a total of 28 from the Union. On the sidelines of that meeting, she should talk to EC President Donald Tusk about progress in the Brexit negotiations, but also with her colleagues from Ireland, Poland and Sweden.
At the last ES, in October, the European twenty-seven made a gesture of goodwill towards London and agreed to launch "internal preparations" for future negotiations on a commercial deal with Great Britain, which Britain wants to start as soon as possible. They warned, however, that the second phase of negotiations would not begin until "significant progress" had been made on the three priority issues of negotiations on the terms of the EU-UK divorce. Those three questions are the bill that Britain has to pay for leaving, the fate of European and British citizens after the divorce, which should be at the end of March 2019, and the consequences of Britain's exit for Ireland. The heads of state of the twenty-seven should decide at a summit in mid-December in Brussels whether to give the green light for the second phase of negotiations with London.
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