Britain will not be able to negotiate a trade deal with the EU within two years, an ally of Angela Merkel said as Theresa May was forced on to the defensive over her Brexit timetable.
As the prime minister arrived in Brussels for her second EU summit her aides tried to dismiss warnings from Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, and Lord O’Donnell, former cabinet secretary, that it could take up to ten years to agree a new deal.
Other EU diplomats backed Sir Ivan, saying that negotiations would extend into the next decade and need a transitional arrangement to avoid a “cliff edge” departure.
Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee and an ally of the German chancellor, said there was “simply too much” to do for a trade agreement and details of the UK-EU relationship to be completed.
“A transitional arrangement is unavoidable because it is so complex and because you cannot do it in parallel,” he said. “This may take perhaps five, seven, ten years. There are hundreds of thousands of pages of law you have to replace and you have 27 members with perhaps different interests.”
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He also said that the British “mercantilistic” view of the EU was leading London to make miscalculations about what was possible. The belief that the car industry would lead Germany to persuade the rest of the EU to meet British demands on market access was an “illusion”. “The French would not support a special deal with Britain for the sake of the German car industry,” Mr Röttgen said.
Sir Ivan, Britain’s most senior diplomat in Brussels, told Mrs May in October that plans to complete Brexit in two years were unrealistic and that it could take up to ten years. His comments were made public yesterday.
Mrs May refused to answer questions about Sir Ivan’s statement when she arrived at the summit, but her spokeswoman said: “We have been clear that we are expecting a two-year process and we are not planning to extend it.”
The summit discussed the migration crisis, Syria and European defence issues. Mrs May was excluded from a session at which other EU leaders discussed their negotiating stance.
Lord O’Donnell told the World at One on BBC Radio 4 that while the UK might be able to “symbolically” leave the EU by 2019 “all sorts of details will still remain to be sorted out”. “The idea that you can manage this carving out of a new relationship . . . in 18 months, let alone two years, there’s not a chance, there never was a chance.”
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Asked how long the process of reaching a final deal would take, Lord O’Donnell replied, “years and years”.
EU negotiators are planning on the basis that agreement could be agreed in principle in two years but that would include laying out a structured schedule of negotiations into the next decade.
Both parties also need to agree on the extent of ongoing UK liabilities to the EU. Yesterday Sky News claimed that Michel Barnier, the European Commission’s chief negotiator, was working on a figure of £42 billion to £50 billion.
Last night leaders agreed to let officials from the European parliament attend talks on Brexit between national representatives. Martin Schulz, president of the European parliament, said that “if we are not adequately involved, we may not be able to give our consent. In this situation the UK would face the hardest Brexit possible.”
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Stephan Mayer, the home affairs spokesman for Mrs Merkel, agreed that it “was not easy” to complete such a complex trade negotiation in two years.
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Although he would not be drawn on an estimated timeframe, he said: “It is very ambitious to finish these negotiations within two years. It is a huge project so the next step must be that the British government trigger Article 50 . . . and then we are open to negotiations.”
He played down the fact that Mrs May had been excluded from a Brexit meeting in Brussels yesterday, saying: “Some member states already tried to lead pre-negotiations so it’s in Germany’s interests, it’s in France’s interests, to make a coherent approach and for this reason I think it was quite reasonable that the 27 states met without Theresa May.”