UK Brexit Minister Dominic Raab is meeting with EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels today. Reuters reported that the EU is definitely having a real push for concluding the negotiation by October 18-19 EU summit. But it’s not optimistic base on current progress. In particular, there is no concrete proposal, from EU’s point of view, that would work on the Irish border issue.
The next scheduled summit on December 13-14 is seen as too late by EU. That would leave too little time for ratification of an agreement before formal Brexit in March 2019. Also, that’s too hard for businesses to start implementing contingency plans. Hence, an idea of a interim, unscheduled summit in November to handle the issue is floating around. It’s seen as the last moment for the negotiations.
