Hindustan Surkhiyan Desk: European leaders resolved a last-minute dispute over the future of Gibraltar yesterday, clearing the way for a summit to approve the Brexit deal.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez withdrew a threat to boycott Sunday’s European Council just hours before Britain’s Theresa May was due in Brussels.
The British premier plans to meet EU leaders Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, even though diplomats say the agreement is ready for EU leaders to approve.
Ahead of her arrival, diplomats had scrambled for an unexpected intense final round of discussion, after Spain insisted on keeping a veto over future changes to EU ties with Gibraltar.
Then Britain issued a statement saying it would continue bilateral talks with Spain after Brexit on March 29 — and Sanchez relented.
“I have just announced to the King that Spain has reached an agreement on Gibraltar,” he told a news conference.
“The European Council will therefore be held tomorrow. Europe and the United Kingdom have accepted Spain’s demands. Spain has lifted the veto and will vote in favour of Brexit.”
Even as Sanchez was speaking, the president of the European Council Donald Tusk was finally able to issue his letter inviting the leaders of EU member states to today’s summit.
According to Tusk’s invitation, the withdrawal agreement protects citizens’ rights and the Northern Ireland peace process, while ensuring Britain will keep paying EU dues during a transition period.
Alongside the withdrawal treaty, a second short political declaration will also be approved today.
Even if EU approves the measures, May will still have to sell the deal to the British parliament, an even greater political challenge.
The biggest obstacle to the accord is the vehement opposition in the British parliament from within May’s party and the DUP, whose 10 members of parliament agreed to a ‘confidence and supply’ deal last year to back her minority government after a snap election. Party leader Arlene Foster on Friday said the DUP would revisit the confidence and supply deal if the withdrawal agreement was approved in parliament.
And upping the ante, DUP yesterday launched fresh attacks on her Brexit withdrawal deal yesterday, saying it would leave Britain in a “pitiful” place and that a Labour government may be preferable.
May has refused to say whether she would resign if parliament eventually votes down the divorce agreement, but the political temperature in Westminster has reached boiling point.
