European Union leaders are preparing for a start next week to formal negotiations on Britain's departure from the EU, if Theresa May gets a green light from parliament to trigger article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
An authorising Bill is expected to clear parliament on Monday and the prime minister is due to report on this week’s EU summit to the House of Commons the following day.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Friday that they would meet again on April 6th if Ms May triggered article 50 by next Wednesday.
"There will be a response immediately by the European Council and there will be guidelines issued by the European Council within 48 hours. And the European Council meeting to adopt those guidelines will be on April 6th," the Taoiseach said as he left Brussels on Friday.
European Council president Donald Tusk outlined the same timetable, although the prime minister herself remained coy during the summit about when she would fire the starting pistol. When Mr Kenny asked her during a bilateral meeting in Brussels when she would trigger article 50, she repeated the formula that she would do so by the end of March.
The Government hopes that Ireland's particular vulnerability to the impact of Brexit will be highlighted in the negotiating guidelines, a document outlining the EU's negotiating priorities and timetable. The Taoiseach said on Friday that he and Ms May had reaffirmed their determination to avoid a return to a hard Border.
“We have a very clear agreement that we will not go back to a hard Border, which brought with it sectarian violence and all of that before. That’s the political position. It’s also the political challenge to make that happen,” he said.
“It is not beyond the ingenuity or the imaginative creative capacity of both Irish and British officials to deal with that problem. This is a political challenge. Politics here leads the technology.”
Reject
Ms May faces votes in both houses of parliament on Monday after the Lords backed two amendments to the Bill authorising her to trigger article 50. The prime minister is confident MPs will reject both amendments and peers have made clear they will not attempt to delay the legislation any further.
Ms May will report to the Commons on the Brussels summit next Tuesday, a day later than usual, but just in time to meet the informal deadline imposed by the European Council. As EU leaders prepared for the start of negotiations on Britain’s withdrawal, Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said he hoped Britain would rejoin the EU in the future.
“I don’t like Brexit, because I would like to be in the same boat as the British,” he said. “The day will come when the British will re-enter the boat, I hope.”
Polish refusal
The two-day summit was overshadowed by Poland’s refusal to sign off on council conclusions in protest against the reappointment of the country’s former prime minister Donald Tusk as European Council president. After Mr Tusk expressed concern about Poland’s isolation, the country’s prime minister Beata Szydlo said she did not need his sympathy.
“Politics depends on having to defend our own interests. For as long as I am prime minister, I will defend the interests of the Polish people. I’m hired to defend the Polish state and Polish citizens and I will be loyal to this. Tusk’s sympathy is not necessary. He doesn’t have to take care of me,” she said.
After Ms May left the summit, the other 27 leaders discussed a joint declaration on the future of Europe they are due to make on the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome on March 25th. France, Germany, Italy and Spain want the declaration to stress that groups of countries should be able to move at different speeds towards deeper integration.
