BRUSSELS: European Union ministers met Friday to discuss gaps with Britain in the Brexit negotiations as Germany’s envoy admitted he was nervous time was running out for a deal.
EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier was due to brief the ministers on his talks with his new British counterpart Dominic Raab, after their first meeting on Thursday.
Raab took up the job after a rebellion against Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit blueprint, with the discord in London and slow pace of talks worrying many in Europe.
“Time is running out. The clock is ticking. That is why I’m a little bit nervous,” Germany’s European affairs minister Michael Roth said on arrival for the Brussels meeting.
Britain is set to leave the bloc on March 30, but the two sides want to strike an agreement by late October in order to give parliaments enough time to endorse a deal.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, published a document on Thursday urging the remaining 27 member states and businesses to “step up preparations” for all outcomes, including the lack of deal.
It warned of disruptions, including to business supply chains.
Britons voted to leave the 28-nation bloc in June 2016, but negotiations were only launched a year later and have bogged down frequently since then.
Raab said in Brussels on Thursday he looked forward to “intensifying, heating up” the Brexit negotiations.
May’s blueprint would see Britain ask the EU for a free trade area for goods through a “facilitated customs arrangement” alongside a “common rulebook.”
EU ministers welcomed some but not all parts of the blueprint.
They listed as a top concern the lack of progress on the future of the border between EU member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland.
Under its guidelines, the EU stipulates there should be no “hard border,” such as customs checks, in order to preserve the gains of the Irish peace process.
“We have no solution yet” on Ireland, Luxembourg’s minister Jean Asselborn told reporters.
“And if we can’t find a solution, I don’t know how to bring Brexit to the goal,” Asselborn said.
Standing with Raab on Thursday, Barnier said there were only 13 months to finalize a withdrawal agreement.
“It is a matter of urgency to agree on a legally operative backstop for Ireland and northern Ireland. We need an all weather insurance policy,” he said.
EU minister ‘nervous’ time running out for Brexit deal
EU minister ‘nervous’ time running out for Brexit deal
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
