Oh dear. It’s only Monday and already Theresa May’s week appears to have taken a turn for the worse. The Prime Minister’s plan to renegotiate the terms of the backstop has received a strongly-worded rebuke from the European Commission. MPs from the Commons Brexit committee were in Brussels this morning meeting with Martin Selmayr, the commission’s secretary general. Some of those present reported that they left the meeting believing the UK would be able to secure legally-binding concessions on the issue of the backstop.
However, on seeing this account reported, Selmayr has taken to social media to put forward a different account of what took place. Jean-Claude Juncker’s close ally tweeted the BBC’s Adam Fleming to say that ‘nobody’ on the EU side was considering legally-binding assurances on the withdrawal agreement. Selmayr claims that the conversations with UK MPs failed to suggest an assurance on the backstop would be enough to get a deal over the line:
On the EU side, nobody is considering this.
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