EU leaders are expected to announce during a meeting in Salzburg next week that an extraordinary Brexit summit will take place in November, as they give Michel Barnier extra encouragement to strike a deal with the British prime minister.
Discussions on the state of play in the talks will take place over a two-hour lunch at an informal summit in Austria, at which leaders are likely to instruct the EU’s chief negotiator to work with the best of Theresa May’s Chequers proposals.
The EU27 will insist there needs to be resolution on the issue of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland by the time of a leaders’ summit in October in order for a deal to be possible.
The Guardian
FT: The EU is preparing to give its Brexit negotiator new instructions to help close a deal with Britain, in a conciliatory move that will bolster Theresa May as she suffers savage attacks from Brexiters at home.
After a weekend in which Boris Johnson, former UK foreign secretary, lambasted Mrs May’s Brexit strategy as wrapping “a suicide vest around the British constitution”, any positive signals from the EU would provide a rare fillip for the British prime minister.
