European Union leaders failed to agree on a proposal by France and Germany to hold a summit soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin after Poland and Baltic countries said it would send the wrong message as East-West ties deteriorate.

After U.S. President Joe Biden met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16, French President Emmanuel Macron said the first EU summit with Putin since January 2014 would be “a dialogue to defend our interests”. He insisted the EU could not only be reactive in its diplomacy with Russia.

But after late night talks at their meeting in Brussels, the 27 EU leaders failed to reach an agreement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said early on Friday.

“It was a very comprehensive discussion, and not an easy one,” she told reporters. “There was no agreement today on an immediate leaders’ meeting,” she said.

EU summits with Russia ended after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March 2014 and the West imposed sanctions.

While Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he supported the Franco-German proposal, many other leaders were opposed.

“It was a common position of many leaders” not to change the stance on Russia, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said after the meeting broke up. He earlier said the idea was like “trying to engage the bear to keep a pot of honey safe”.

Latvia’s Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said the EU risked rewarding Russia with a summit even though diplomacy has failed to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine with Russian-backed separatists.

Instead, EU leaders fell back to a familiar position of warning of more sanctions on Moscow if it continued what the EU says is a Russian policy of disinformation, cyber and covert attacks and interference to try to divide the bloc.

Russia denies any wrongdoing

In a summit statement, leaders called on the European Commission and the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell “to present options for additional restrictive measures, including economic sanctions” against Russia.

The EU has sanctions on the Russian energy, financial and arms sectors and individual sanctions on Russians accused of human rights abuses and for using banned chemical weapons.

Diplomats say further sanctions could target Russian money laundering or powerful oligarchs suspected of serious corruption abroad, as non-EU member Britain did for the first time in April.

Search for dialogue

Macron had tried in September 2019 to seek less frosty ties with Putin, without success, and Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel met Putin in Moscow in January 2020. Putin held a phone call with European Council President Charles Michel, who chairs EU summits, on June 7 this year.

France and Germany want to be able to work with Russia on combating climate change and to find ways to stabilise relations. Merkel said even without a summit: “Formats will be explored … under which dialogues can be started.”

Many EU countries are concerned that the Kremlin does not take the bloc seriously, after Borrell was publicly humiliated in February by the Kremlin. Russia expelled EU diplomats during Borrell’s visit to Moscow without warning.

Lithuania’s Nauseda said: “We should be extremely cautious, this is not like the relationship of Russia with the United States”.

While France is a nuclear power, the EU relies on NATO for its territorial defence and takes decisions among 27 states, making it easier for the Kremlin to exploit divisions.

The Kremlin earlier welcomed the idea of a summit, saying both Brussels and Moscow needed dialogue, although Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he wanted more details.

On opposing sides in standoffs in Ukraine and Belarus, and at odds over human rights, the EU and Russia accuse each other of threatening security and stability from the Baltics to the Black Sea.

The EU on Thursday imposed economic sanctions on Belarus, an ally of Russia that the Kremlin sees as a buffer state between Russia and NATO.

Reporting from Brussels shortly before the start of the summit, FRANCE 24’s Dave Keating said there was a “very mixed reaction” within the bloc to the proposal. “A lot of EU leaders are very angry about this proposal,” he explained. “Several feel that it’s pretentious for the leaders of France and Germany to think that they could meet with Putin and speak for all of the EU … a lot of countries think that this meeting shouldn’t be happening at all, particularly the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – and Poland.”

In their remarks to reporters ahead of the summit, a number of European leaders expressed misgivings over the initiative, said Keating. “Estonia’s prime minister [Kaja Kallas] coming into the summit building said she wants to hear from France and Germany what exactly has changed in terms of Russia’s behaviour to warrant this suggested opening of dialogue. We also had Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saying that if Merkel and Macron want to meet with Putin, he won’t object, but he himself would never meet with Putin. Asked why, he said, ‘one word: MH17’ – that’s the airliner carrying Dutch passengers that was downed over eastern Ukraine by Russian separatists in 2014,” Keating explained.

Standing firm and engaging

The Merkel-Macron plan insists the EU has to stand firm and united on Moscow, but should look to engage with the Kremlin on issues of mutual interest such as climate change, health, the Iran nuclear deal and conflicts in Syria and Libya.

Source: France 24

Nine Catalan separatists who were serving long prison sentences for their role in a failed 2017 independence bid were released from jail on Wednesday a day after being pardoned by Spain.

Rain was falling as the seven male prisoners walked out of Lledoners jail some 70 kilometres (45 miles) northwest of Barcelona, where they were met by umbrella-carrying supporters shouting “Independence, independence!”

As they walked through the gates, they were embraced by newly-appointed Catalan leader Pere Aragones, and posed for a photograph alongside a Catalan independence flag and a banner reading “Freedom for Catalonia”, an AFP correspondent said.

At the same time, the two remaining prisoners, both women, were released from two other facilities.

The clemency decision was approved by the Spanish government on Tuesday, with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez saying he hoped it would draw a line under past confrontations with Catalonia’s separatist-led regional leaders and open the way for talks.

The pardons were published earlier on Wednesday in the government’s official gazette.

The separatists were serving between nine and 13 years in jail for their role in holding a banned referendum in October 2017 that was marred by police violence then followed by a short-lived declaration of independence, sparking Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.

Although the jail sentences have been dropped, all nine are banned from holding public office and the pardons are conditional on them not committing “a serious crime” over the next three to six years.

They have all served more than three years behind bars.

“I am here because the sacrifice they have made for Catalonia and for all of us has been huge,” said Ignasi Sole, a 65-year-old retired mechanic who was waiting outside Lledoners prison for their release.

“It’s a way of thanking them.”

– ‘Independence through dialogue’ –

The pardons have been roundly denounced by Spain’s right-wing opposition as well as by many in the pro-independence camp who want a full amnesty that would allow those who fled abroad to return home.

Analysts have also warned it is a risky political gamble that may help calm tensions but won’t solve the years-long turmoil over the separatist crisis, which has left Catalonia sharply divided.

Madrid is hoping the move will give impetus to the upcoming talks with the Catalan government of Aragones who is more open to dialogue than his hardline predecessor.

Aragones and Oriol Junqueras, the prisoner serving the longest sentence of 13 years, who also heads the moderate ERC party, have recently taken steps towards Sanchez by distancing themselves from the path of unilateralism.

“We will devote all our efforts in this new stage to ensuring that negotiation be the basis for resolving the conflict,” Aragones said Tuesday.

“The best way to achieve (independence) is through dialogue, negotiation and agreement.”

When the separatists were sentenced in October 2019 by Spain’s Supreme Court, the ruling triggered an outcry across Catalonia, with thousands hitting the streets in protests that sometimes turned violent.

The move to pardon the separatists was approved by more than two-thirds of Catalans, an Ipsos poll found.

But the same poll found that 53 percent of Spaniards were against the move, which has also been opposed by Spain’s Supreme Court and the right-wing opposition.

In the coming weeks, Sanchez will meet for the first time with Aragones, who has pledged to push for an amnesty and a new referendum on self-determination — this time with Madrid’s approval.

Both are out of the question for the Spanish government.

Source: AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron offered on Saturday to reset relations with Britain as long as Prime Minister Boris Johnson stands by the Brexit divorce deal he signed with the European Union.

Since Britain completed its exit from the EU late last year, relations with the bloc and particularly France have soured, with Macron becoming the most vocal critic of London’s refusal to honour the terms of part of its Brexit deal.

At a meeting at the Group of Seven rich nations in southwestern England, Macron told Johnson the two countries had common interests, but that ties could improve only if Johnson kept his word on Brexit, a source said.

“The president told Boris Johnson there needed to be a reset of the Franco-British relationship,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

“This can happen provided that he keeps his word with the Europeans,” the source said, adding that Macron spoke in English to Johnson.

‘Shared approach’

The Elysee Palace said that France and Britain shared a common vision and common interests on many global issues and “a shared approach to transatlantic policy”.

Johnson will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel later on Saturday, where she could also raise the dispute over a part of the EU divorce deal that is called the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The British leader, who is hosting the G7 meeting, wants the summit to focus on global issues, but has stood his ground on trade with Northern Ireland, calling on the EU to be more flexible in its approach to easing trade to the province from Britain.

The protocol aims to keep the province, which borders EU member Ireland, in both the United Kingdom’s customs territory and the EU’s single market. But London says the protocol is unsustainable in its current form because of the disruption it has caused to supplies of everyday goods to Northern Ireland.

Source: REUTERS

The Christian Democrats (CDU) party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel has won the vote in a key state, giving the conservatives a big boost ahead of the national election.

Election results in Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany showed CDU won around 37 percent of the votes on Sunday in the last regional poll before the general elections scheduled for September 26.

The result is a huge boost for the conservative party which has chosen its new leader Armin Laschet to replace Merkel as chancellor after her 16-year-stint at the helm.

“Laschet is still a long way from the chancellor’s office,” the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily said. But the poll result has brought him “much closer to it.”

Political observers say the vote also showed the CDU’s greater popularity in comparison to its main rival at the national level, the Green party, as well as Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Polls in the last ten days have shown the CDU, and its smaller Bavarian CSU sister party, are slightly ahead of the Greens again after falling behind earlier in the year, according to Berenberg Bank’s chief economist Holger Schmieding.

“After the CDU did well in Saxony-Anhalt, this nascent reversal of fortunes in favor of the CDU will likely continue,” Schmieding said.

Source: Presstv

Turkey on Wednesday blamed the EU for seating arrangements that left European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen without a chair during a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan and Turkish officials came under a torrent of criticism after images went viral of his meeting on Tuesday with von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel in Ankara.

The well-appointed room which the three leaders entered had only two chairs arranged next to the corresponding EU and Turkish flags.

Erdogan and Michel quickly seated themselves while von der Leyen — whose diplomatic rank is the same as that of the two men — was left standing.

“Ehm,” she said pointedly, while appearing to spread her arms in wonder.

Official images later showed her seated on a sofa opposite one taken by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Cavusoglu said on Thursday that criticism levelled against Turkey for the diplomatic blunder was “unfair”.

“The seating arrangements were made in line with the EU suggestion. Period. We would not be revealing this fact had accusations not been made against Turkey,” Cavusoglu told reporters.

“The demands and suggestions of the EU side were met and the proper protocol applied during the meeting,” he said.

‘Turkish hospitality’

The diplomatic faux pas was instantly branded “sofagate” on Twitter and became the dominant talking point of the first Turkey-EU summit in a year.

The meeting was aimed at setting a more positive tone to relations after months of trouble on multiple fronts.

But it ended with European officials accusing Turkey — which last month withdrew from the landmark Istanbul Convention combatting gender-based violence — of male chauvinism.

“First they withdraw from the Istanbul Convention and now they leave the President of European Commission without a seat in an official visit. Shameful. #WomensRights,” wrote Spanish European Parliament member Iratxe Garcia Perez.

Some also questioned why Michel was so quick to take a seat.

The European Council president broke nearly a full day of silence on Wednesday by writing on Facebook that he realised that the scene gave “the impression that I was oblivious to this situation”.

But Michel blamed it on a “protocol blunder” by Turkey that he and von der Leyen decided to overlook at the time.

The two EU leaders “chose not to worsen it by making a public incident,” Michel wrote.

“I am sad that this situation eclipsed the major and beneficial geopolitical work that we carried out together in Ankara, and of which I hope Europe will reap the benefits.”

Von der Leyen herself used a post-summit press conference to stress that she had a detailed discussion with Erdogan about women’s rights.

“I am deeply worried about the fact that Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Convention,” she said.

European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said the incident had “sharpened her focus on the issue”.

But Cavusoglu said Turkey knew perfectly how to follow diplomatic protocol and was simply complying with the instructions of a planning delegation sent by Brussels.

“Turkey is a well-established state that hosts guests often and at every level,” he said.

“The meetings — especially in Turkey — are held within the frame of international protocol rules and Turkish hospitality.”

Source: AFP

Catalonia goes to the polls Sunday for an election Madrid hopes will unseat the region’s ruling separatists more than three years after a failed bid to break away from Spain.

But the vote could see a high level of abstentions as Spain battles a third wave of the pandemic.

Regional authorities ramped up restrictions to slow soaring case numbers after the Christmas holidays and while the situation has slightly improved, the figures are still high.

When the polls open at 0800 GMT on Sunday, about 5.5 million voters will be eligible to cast their ballots.

But 35,600 of the 82,000 people assigned to help staff polling stations on the day have asked to be recused, despite pledges they will receive full protective suits.

The regional government has insisted that all necessary health and security measures are in place, providing antigen tests for election workers, as well as spacious, well-ventilated polling stations.

It has accepted only 23,300 of the requests.

Separatists eye majority

Turnout for the vote is not expected to exceed 60 percent — and not just because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The vote has been overshadowed by a bitter split between the separatist factions following the failed 2017 independence bid that sparked Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.

The Catalan government has been dominated by separatists since 2015, but Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is hoping this election, the fifth in a decade, could end their rule.

He himself came to lead Spain’s government in 2018 thanks in part to support from Catalan separatists. Even today, his minority government relies on them to pass legislation.

But Sanchez has not hidden his desire to remove them from power.

To that end, former health minister Salvador Illa is spearheading the Socialists’ bid to unseat the separatists in Sunday’s election. Sanchez has even taken part in some electoral meetings himself.

The polls put his PSC (Socialist Party of Catalonia) neck-and-neck with the pro-independence parties.

Post-election deal-making

Even if the PSC comes out on top however, polls suggest none of the parties will win an outright majority of 68 in the 135-seat regional parliament.

And that means the eventual outcome will depend on deal-making.

Forming a government “will probably be quite challenging” and prospects of a repeat election cannot be ruled out, says Antonio Barroso, an analyst at political consultancy Teneo.

And while the separatist parties remain deeply divided, polls suggest the hardline JxC — “Together for Catalonia” — and the more moderate ERC could once again cobble together a ruling majority.

Both this week formally ruled out a coalition with the socialists.

The main question then is which of the two will come out stronger.

In the previous election in December 2017, JxC was ahead, forming a 70-seat coalition with ERC.

Should the tables be turned in ERC’s favour, it would likely ease tensions and help the tentative reconciliation Sanchez’s government has sought to broker since coming to power.

“An ERC executive would maintain the current ambiguous approach of criticising Madrid rhetorically but not adopting any unilateral measures,” said Barroso.

“In contrast, a government headed by JxC would probably lead to a more confrontational stance.”

(AFP)

Germany’s domestic security agency is on the verge of announcing whether the far-right AfD will be placed under surveillance for posing a threat to democracy, dealing a potential blow to the anti-immigration party in a key election year.

After a two-year investigation and a report totalling over 1,000 pages, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) is to decide in the coming days if the Alternative for Germany (AfD) will be classed as a “suspected case” over its ties to right-wing extremism.

The classification would allow intelligence agents to shadow the party, tap its communications and possibly use undercover informants.

The anti-Islam, anti-immigration AfD has often courted controversy by calling for Germany to stop atoning for its World War II crimes. Senior figure Alexander Gauland once described the Nazi era as just “a speck of bird poo” on German history.

The BfV’s decision comes at a sensitive time for the AfD. While it is the largest opposition party in parliament, it has seen its ratings fall as the pandemic has kept the spotlight firmly on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition parties.

AfD leader Joerg Meuthen has vowed to take legal action if the BfV decides to begin surveillance, accusing the government-run agency of playing politics in what pundits have dubbed a “super election year” in Germany.

The AfD faces six regional elections this year and a general election on September 26, the first in over 15 years that won’t feature Merkel.

The first regional test will come with state polls in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate on March 14, where support for the AfD is hovering around 10 percent.

– Radical ‘Wing’ –

The AfD started out at as an anti-euro outfit in 2013 before capitalising on public anger over Merkel’s 2015 decision to allow in a wave of asylum seekers from conflict-torn countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The AfD took nearly 13 percent of the vote in the 2017 general election, allowing it to make its debut in the German Bundestag.

But the party has long been locked in an internal battle between an extremist faction and populist, conservative members who are wary of scaring off mainstream voters.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service already placed a radical fringe of the party, known as The Wing, under surveillance last year over its association with known neo-Nazis and on suspicion of violating the constitution.

The faction, led by firebrand Bjoern Hoecke, dissolved itself last March but many of its 7,000 members remain active in the AfD.

“This gives rise to doubts about whether they really lost influence,” Der Spiegel weekly said.

Hoecke, the AfD’s leader in Thuringia state, famously referred to Germany’s Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as “a monument of shame” and has called for a “180 degree reversal” in the country’s remembrance culture.

The AfD’s Thuringia branch and another one in Brandenburg have also been designated as “suspected cases” of right-wing extremism by the BfV.

The authorities’ concern about the AfD has grown after the country suffered a string of right-wing, anti-Semitic attacks in recent years. The risk of violence from Germany’s far-right scene is now considered the country’s top threat.

AfD chief Meuthen has struggled to rein in the party’s more radical figures, telling a congress in November that they would not win over voters by being “increasingly crude, aggressive”.

He also rubbished comparisons of the current coronavirus restrictions with a “dictatorship”, as AfD lawmaker Gauland had done.

Nevertheless, more than a few of the AfD’s 35,000 members are believed to harbour extremist sympathies.

One of them, Andreas Kalbitz, was the head of the AfD in Brandenburg before he was kicked out for hiding his past membership in a neo-Nazi youth group.

“The AfD could be declared a suspected case because it is dominated by the radical wing of the party, whose influence has only grown in recent months,” Hajo Funke, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University, told AFP.

As for the party’s chances at the ballot box in 2021, Funke said “endless” infighting had left the AfD without clear policies, settling instead on “simply saying the opposite of whatever the government proposes”.

Source: AFP

As the French President Emmanuel Macron faces accusations that he is moving to curtail the civic rights in his country and reduce transparency, the recent state visit of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi underscored France’s longstanding willingness to turn a blind eye to systemic oppression in the countries it sells weapons to.

When Sisi came to France for a state visit this week, less than a month after prominent human rights workers in Egypt were arrested and slapped with terrorism-related charges following a meeting with French and other European diplomats, Human Rights Watch called for arms sales to Egypt to stop and activists were looking to French President Emmanuel Macron to make a strong statement.

They had, perhaps, reason to be hopeful. After the November arrests, the French Foreign Ministry issued a statement expressing its “deep concern” about developments in the Arab nation. “France maintains a frank, exacting dialogue with Egypt on human rights issues, including individual cases,” the statement said.

In the end, not only were activists disappointed by Macron’s reception of Sisi, they were outraged by it. Far from taking a firm line on abuses and demanding that Egypt do better if it hoped to continue receiving military aid, Macron went out of his way to disassociate the purchase of arms with the respect of human rights.

“I will not condition matters of defence and economic cooperation on these disagreements [over human rights],” Macron said in a press conference. “It is more effective to have a policy of demanding dialogue than a boycott that would only reduce the effectiveness of one of our partners in the fight against terrorism.”

“The whole way he framed the human rights debate in the press conference was horrific,” said Timothy Kaldas, Nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “Arresting human rights workers and oppressing Egyptians is not fighting terrorism. Quite the contrary.”

A double standard

Macron’s stance was particularly salient given that his own government has been under fire over a proposed security law that critics charge would limit civic liberties in France. At the same time that he has defended France’s commitment to freedom of speech in the wake of the killing of a teacher who showed his class caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. Macron called the teacher, Samuel Paty, a “quiet hero” dedicated to preserving French values.

Macron’s position with Sisi this week was notably softer than the one he took in January 2019, when he told his Egyptian counterpart that security could not be considered separately from human rights, noting that oppression jeopardises stability rather than enhance it.

“It’s a double standard,” said Rim-Sarah Alouane, a Researcher in Public Law, University Toulouse Capitole. “We are in the middle of this hypocrisy about how we are supposed to be the country of the enlightenment, of human rights – we are supposed to have basically created human rights – and yet we have no problem making deals with the devil and closing our eyes to what should be the most important thing: the protection of the human.”

Kaldas agreed: “[Macron] will be adamant about how much France cherishes its values in one context and then be completely unwilling to prioritise those values in his relations with authoritarians.”

Marcon has shown himself similarly willing to ignore abuses in other parts of the region as well. When several European countries, including Germany, called for the suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Macron dismissed those concerns as “demagoguery”, saying the weapons had nothing to do with the murder. “I understand the connection with what’s happening in Yemen, but there is no link with Mister Khashoggi,” he said.

Saudi Arabia leads a coalition that has been engaged in a war in Yemen that has had devastating effects on the humanitarian situation there. “The only reason [Macron] cites Yemen is to dismiss the other argument, but then he continues to provide the arms that fuel the war in Yemen,” Kaldas said.

Key to sovereignty

France has a vested interest in batting away the issue of rights abuses. Arms sales are big business for the country, which is third in global military exports, coming behind the United States and Russia. The defence sector in France employs 200,000 people, roughly 13 percent of the total industrial workforce, according to a report by the country’s parliament.

France is one of the few countries in the world capable of independently producing advanced military systems, and arms sales are key to the survival of the defence sector.

“It’s important for France to maintain its own arms industry,” both to be a significant player on the world stage and to be self-sufficient, said Pieter D. Wezeman, Senior Researcher in the Arms and Military Expenditure Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “To be able to do that, you need to have export clients, because otherwise you won’t be able to afford it.”

As Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly put it in 2018: “Arms exports are the business model of our sovereignty.”

And the industry is growing. Arms sales can vary widely from year to year, so researchers look at extended periods of time. Comparing the years 2015-2019 with 2010-2014, French arms exports grew 72 percent, representing 7.9 percent of the global arms market. Over the past decade, the Middle East has accounted for roughly 48 percent of French exports, said Guy Anderson, Associate Director of the Industry and Markets division at Jane’s, publisher of Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“France has been very prolific in providing weapons to a wide range of people,” Wezeman said.

France has been known to ignore arms embargos as well. In his autobiography “No Room for Small Dreams,” the late Israeli politician Shimon Perez said that France secretly sold weapons to Israel back in the 1950s, when few nations would. And it was the French who gave Israel its nuclear capacities, Perez wrote.

The illicit arms sales have continued. The French found ways to supply weapons to the apartheid regime in South Africa despite restrictions on such exports and press reports said that military material found in Libya in 2019 indicated that France had violated the arms embargo there.

“France is one of the least scrupulous arms sellers on earth,” said Kaldas. “Even the US is a little more restrictive about their arms sales.”

Culled from France 24

European diplomats warned Thursday they have made all the concessions they can in trade talks with Britain, as Downing Street vowed to press ahead with a UK law that could undermine Brussels’ remaining trust in London.

The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier has been in London for six days, trying to carve out a difficult compromise with his UK counterpart David Frost and draw up a trade pact that can be ratified within weeks.

“We are at the end of a marathon, probably past the 40 kilometre (25-mile) mark. But there’s still a little way to go,” Barnier adviser Stefaan de Rynck said, during a debate at the European Policy Centre.

As the finish line nears, tempers were fraying in Brussels, with some of the EU’s 27 member states — led by France and the Netherlands — worried that Barnier would shake hands on something that in their view gives up too much ground to a country quitting the club.

An EU diplomat insisted the Europeans remain united, but warned that it was clear that Barnier “was millimetres away from the red lines” he had been given.

“I think it’s quite clear that at this moment in time that we’ve reached a point where we are so close to the limits of our mandate, that we need a movement on the side of the UK if we want to strike a deal,” he said.

“I do not have the impression that we are hours away from a deal… what has to be bridged is still quite substantial,” the diplomat added.

Negotiators are working day and night to agree on a deal in time to be ratified before December 31, when Britain will no longer be bound by EU single market rules under the terms of a post-Brexit transition.

A European source with close knowledge of the negotiations said the talks would continue on Thursday “and no doubt on Friday.”

“Everything could change at any moment,” the source said, adding that the sense of urgency was “now understood in London”.

A British government source said the EU had brought “new elements” into the negotiations. “A breakthrough is still possible in the next few days but that prospect is receding,” the source said late Thursday.

Barnier could brief EU members Friday afternoon but the meeting has yet to be confirmed, a European source said.

In London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman earlier said the negotiating teams were “continuing to work hard to resolve the differences that remain.”

“Our focus remains, and will continue to be, on trying to secure a free trade agreement.”

But Number 10 also confirmed that it would go ahead next week with a plan to push through the Internal Market Bill, a draft law to govern UK business after it leaves the EU single market.

Johnson admits that clauses in the bill would breach the withdrawal treaty he signed with Brussels, and EU officials have warned that it could be impossible to ratify a trade deal if he persists.

‘Hold our nerve’

The House of Lords, Britain’s upper parliamentary chamber, stripped the offending measures — which Brussels fears breach a promise to establish a customs border in the Irish Sea — from the bill.

But the spokesman said: “Our position remains unchanged. We will overturn the Lords defeat and reinsert those clauses.”

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, on a visit to Paris, said a deal would be possible in the coming days as long as European nations “hold our nerve”.

Negotiations to determine the future trading relationship starting on January 1 are currently stalled on three key issues — fisheries, regulatory issues and governance of a future pact.

Coveney said he hoped a deal would be reached but that there would be “no further extensions” and “no extra time” beyond January 1.

But both EU member states and the European Parliament would have to ratify any accord struck between Frost and Barnier and their bosses Johnson and EU president Ursula von der Leyen.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex was in the Channel port of Boulogne on Thursday to promise French fishermen they would not be abandoned if they lose access to UK waters.

Source: AFP

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has called for a second independence referendum to be held as soon as next year, in a major challenge to the United Kingdom (UK), which is is still struggling with difficulties of Brexit.

Sturgeon said she anticipates that a vote will take place “in the earlier part” of the next Scottish parliament, which begins next year.

“The referendum for a whole variety of reasons should be in the earlier part of the next parliament,” she said.

Her Scottish National Party (SNP), which has formed the government since 2007, is expected to perform strongly in elections to the Scottish parliament in May.

This would give her government a mandate to hold another referendum on independence.

Scots voted 55-45 percent against independence in a 2014 referendum.

His government has said there should not be another independence referendum in the near future.

If Sturgeon wins the election in May, Johnson will have to make a decision whether to refuse a referendum and thus allow Scottish discontent to simmer or allow a referendum which could break apart the union.

The UK and Northern Ireland includes England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Britain voted 52-48 to leave the European Union in a 2016 referendum. Scots voted 62% to 38% in favor of remaining in the EU.

The issue of Scotland’s independence was then thrust back into the limelight. Sturgeon said the day after the vote that the situation was a “democratic outrage” and that another independence vote was “highly likely.”

Recent polls show support for the independence of Scotland has been rising lately.

An Ipsos Mori poll indicated last month that 58% of Scots would vote to quit the UK, if a referendum were held this year.

Source: Presstv