Clocks are still ticking, cherries are not for picking and the can is getting a good kicking down the proverbial Brexit road.
It’s still anybody’s guess whether enough progress can be made on the three priority divorce issues - citizens, money and Ireland - by December to open up talks on a transition period and trade deal with the UK.
The talks have entered a déjà vu moment ahead of the summit, with the EU pushing the UK for a “real and sincere” offer on money and the UK sticking to its Florence playbook.
But there are signs coming from London that the British government will flesh out the offer made in prime minister Theresa May’s Florence speech in September, when she promised not only to cover EU budgets up to 2020 but to “honour” the financial commitments the UK made while a member (see EUROPE 11868).
“I was clear in my speech in Florence that we will honour our commitments. But of course, we want to move forward together, talking about the trade issues and trade partnerships for the future”, May said in Gothenburg on Friday.
Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven, whom May met on Thursday evening in Gothenburg (see other articles), said there was still “some way to go” and the UK needs to “clarify what they mean with the financial responsibilities”.
That means, according to several EU officials with knowledge of the talks, agreeing to stump up the money for spending commitments made but not yet paid - the Reste à Liquider, in EU parlance - as well as pensions, European Investment Bank loans and development aid.
And behind the scenes, negotiators are making incremental progress on citizens’ rights.
They are now haggling over specific but important details - protections for children born after Brexit and whether EU nationals are entitled to fuel allowances earned in the UK after they move home.
And the question remains: how to guarantee those rights when the UK has ruled out a direct role for the European Court of Justice? Language is being drafted to try to break the deadlock and work out an indirect role for the ECJ, based on the EU treaty and the European Economic Area agreement.
Which leaves the Irish border as the most intractable issue to solve for December.
The Irish government has threatened to reject a move forward if the UK does not offer “further concessions” to avoid a visible border post-Brexit.
“If we have to wait until the new year, or if we have to wait for further concessions, so be it,” Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar told reporters in Gothenburg on Friday.
He and May met on Friday morning to discuss the issue, with a spokesperson for the British prime minister saying afterwards that both sides had agreed to “work together” to find solutions.
But Dublin is pressuring London to do the work and to agree a special regime for Northern Ireland that would keep it in the customs union, single market, or both.
Varadkar does not say so outright, asking the UK to commit to avoiding “regulatory gaps” with the EU post-Brexit, though it amounts to the same thing. He wants that “written down in practical terms” by December, he says, or he will resist trade talks.
“What we want to take off the table before we even talk about trade is any idea that there would be a hard border, physical border or a border resembling the past in Ireland,” Varadkar said.
However, the UK is not in a position to sign up to the Irish demands, with the Democratic Unionist Party resisting any move that would cut Northern Ireland off from Great Britain.
The Conservatives also have to contend with Scottish nationalist demands to piggy back on any deal done for Northern Ireland.
This week EU officials have been mulling what kind of trade deal would be possible with the UK post-Brexit, coming to the conclusion that a basic free trade agreement - along the lines of Canada, Japan or South Korea - is the only available option.
That would mean “a lot of safeguards” for EU consumers and companies, diplomats said, and only limited access to the EU’s single market.
UK Brexit secretary David Davis has been in Warsaw, Rome and Berlin in the last week to try to get more EU countries on side to speed up talks on trade, while foreign secretary Boris Johnson was in Dublin on Friday to butter up the Irish.
Meanwhile, EU governments will square off with each other next Monday over the relocation of the two London-based agencies for medicines (EMA) and banking (EBA) (see EUROPE 11906). (Sarah Collins)