MNI: Hope For UK On Round 2 Brexit Talks, But Talk Money - EU

By Tara Oakes

     ROME (MNI) - EU leaders cautiously threw the UK a bone at a Council summit

Friday, but won't backtrack from key demands to do more within the existing

negotiation framework -- especially on financial obligations.

     The official communique allows member states to start "internal

preparations" for stage two talks, a nod to the UK's very public hopes for them

to be launched at last.

     EU Council President Donald Tusk told journalists after the two-day

leaders' summit that talk of a Brexit "deadlock" had been "exaggerated".

     His comments fly in the face of European Commissioner Michel Barnier, who

was the one to wield the term "deadlock" after the last round of negotiations

didn't yield the "sufficient progress" needed for future relationship talks to

be launched.

     A wobble in the much-touted EU27 unity? Not necessarily -- Tusk, like

Barnier, said he was hoping to be able to move on to the second round by

December.

     French President Emmanuel Macron, in a marathon press briefing, said he was

"very willing" for new stages of talks to be launched - but only under the

existing framework, with one channel to go through: Barnier.

     Macron was also emphatic about where the main problem lies for him: follow

the money.

     "We are far from having reached the necessary financial commitments,"

Macron said. The bloc and the UK are trying to come to agreement not just on a

total sum to be paid in the divorce settlement, but on the outstanding

commitments the UK signed up to which the bill would spring from.

     For Macron, the process is not even "halfway there".

--MNI London Bureau; tel: +44 203-586-2225; email: les.commons@marketnews.com

[TOPICS: M$B$$$,M$E$$$,MC$$$$,MI$$$$,MGB$$$]