May plays for time as Hollande tells Britain to get on with it

The British prime minister looked tired, her eyes ringed with circles, in her black dress of mourning for the 84 people killed in Nice last week.

She and the French president stood in front of three flags, but one saw only the tiniest sliver of European blue and gold wedged between the Union Jack and French tricolour.

Theresa May’s visits to Berlin and Paris over the past two days appear to indicate her strategy for the coming 2½ years, Le Monde speculated: avoid Brussels by negotiating directly with German and French leaders – and exploit the differences between them.

Britain and Germany are both free-trade enthusiasts, wary of French dirigisme (state control). While Angela Merkel finds May's need for time "completely comprehensible," François Hollande fears that the extreme right-wing Front National will use a dragged-out Brexit to fan anti-European feeling in France.

Take time

Hollande said three times that he wants

Brexit

negotiations to begin “as soon as possible.” He looked glum while May explained that “it will take time to prepare for those negotiations, which is why I have already made clear the UK will not invoke Article 50 until before the end of the year”.

Asked whether she found Hollande to be “a more awkward customer” than Merkel, May simply shook her head and smiled.

The only other moment of levity occurred when the question of Article 50 came up. “It’s about deadline,” Hollande said in accented English. “Question for you.”

The president alluded to the large numbers of French in London and Britons in France. They symbolise the weaknesses of both countries, with exorbitant taxes and the lack of opportunity driving affluent French and the young to Britain, while the UK’s poor social and medical services push pensioners to France.

Both leaders said their respective citizens would be free to remain in the other’s country for the time being. “While we are full members of the EU, there is no change to the position of people in the UK,” May said.

Guarantee rights

“In the future, I want to be able to guarantee rights of EU citizens living in the UK, and I would expect to be able to do so,” she said. “The only situation in which that wouldn’t be possible would be if British citizens’ rights in European members states were not being protected.”

French officials are wary of what they see as the UK’s desire to benefit from the single market while ignoring the EU’s “four freedoms”.

The prime minister said British citizens “sent a very clear message we should introduce some controls to movement of individuals from other European countries into the UK”. But she wants “to get the right deal on trade in goods and services”.

Hollande said the balance between free trade and freedom of movement was the crux of the negotiations.

“The UK has access to the single market because it respects the four freedoms,” he said. “None can be separated from the other. There cannot be freedom of movement of goods, free movement of capital, free movement of services, if there is not free movement of people.

“It will be a choice facing the UK,” Holland added. “If they remain in the single market, they have to assume the free movement that goes with it.”