Ahead of the crunch EU council meeting next month, the government is doing everything it can to try and ensure the UK is given the green light from Brussels to move the negotiations on to trade. As part of this, talk has been rife that Theresa May is ready to considerably up her financial offer for the so-called Brexit bill. This afternoon, Peter Foster, the Telegraph’s Europe Editor, reports that British and EU negotiators have reached a deal over the bill in good time for Theresa May’s lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday.
British and EU negotiators have reportedly agreed that the final figure, deliberately left vague, will be somewhere between €45bn and €55bn. If it comes in at €45bn it will work out at just over £40bn – a figure that has been mooted in the press for some time. What remains to be seen is whether this money is on top of Theresa May’s commitment in the Florence speech to carry on paying into the EU budget during the transition period.
Both Brussels and the government have been keen to stress that nothing has been agreed until everything has been agreed.
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