The Guardian: May - Juncker will find me 'bloody difficult woman' in Brexit talks

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Theresa May has declared that Jean-Claude Juncker will be the next person to discover that she can be a “bloody difficult woman” as cabinet frustration with the EU over the early phases of the Brexit negotiations intensified. The prime minister made the comments about the European commission president after extensive details of a dinner she held with him and key negotiator Michel Barnier were leaked to a German newspaper over the weekend.
May hit back over the issue during an election visit to the south-west. “During the Conservative party leadership campaign I was described by one of my colleagues as a bloody difficult woman” she told the BBC. “And I said at the time the next person to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker.”
The prime minister said there was a lot of agreement between the UK and EU, but said the controversy over the leaks had proved that the upcoming negotiations would be “tough”.
Despite May trumpeting her “bloody difficult” credentials as a negotiator, the EU has long insisted that the talks will be run by the European commission acting on behalf of 27 member states. In addition, while May reportedly told Juncker at the dinner that she would be the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator, senior Brussels officials regard the prospect as completely unrealistic. The EU expects to hold intense week-long negotiating sessions in Brussels every month for the 15-month duration of the main Brexit negotiations – an impossible commitment for a sitting prime minister.
The account of last Wednesday’s meeting in Downing Street, laid out in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, lifted the lid on major tensions relating to both Britain’s “divorce bill” and the critical issue of securing citizens’ rights.
The prime minister was said to tell the group that Britain was not legally obliged to pay a penny, infuriating Juncker, who said he was “10 times more sceptical” about getting a deal done by the end of the session. The commission president was said to have called the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, afterwards to say he believed May’s approach to the negotiations was from a “different galaxy”.
A cabinet source told the Guardian that they believed the decision to reveal the details of the dinner, which was also attended by the Brexit secretary, David Davis, was a “miscalculation” that would outrage British voters.
The insider, with knowledge of the meeting, said the view in government was that European officials felt able to throw their weight around because “they got away with it” previously during tough negotiations with Switzerland and Greece.
They also said they believed EU scepticism about achieving an early deal over citizens’ rights, for British people on the continent and Europeans in the UK, was driven by a desire not to let the UK have the “moral upper hand” over the issue. “We were willing to start talking about this in December,” they said.
The source also said there was evidence that European negotiators were gearing up to demand that any agreement securing the status of citizens would bind the UK to the European court of justice (ECJ) “in perpetuity”. That is despite the fact that May has made clear that removing Britain from the jurisdiction of the ECJ is a red line for her government.
Other Whitehall insiders said that ministers believed Martin Selmayr, the head of cabinet in Juncker’s team, had leaked the information, adding that many felt it was “probably with Berlin’s agreement”. -Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/02/may-juncker-will-find-me-bloody-difficult-woman-in-brexit-talks
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