What the papers say: The cracks could soon show in the EU’s Brexit stance

‘At last’, says the FT, Britain has ‘accepted it must pay its dues to Europe’. ‘It has been a tortuous journey’ to get to this stage and ‘months have been wasted’ along the way. Yet while progress has been made at last, the government has still failed ‘to explain to the public the…cost of leaving’. It’s also the case that while the Brexit divorce offer is now more acceptable to the EU, the bill is ‘only one of three areas in which agreement is needed to unlock talks on the future relationship’. Avoiding a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland remains the trickiest of these problems to find a solution to, and it remains an issue without a ‘simple resolution’. Given this lack of a simple answer, for the time being, argues the FT, ‘the best that can be hoped for’ is ‘fudging the issue’. There is no doubt that there lies ‘a rough road ahead for Mrs May’.