EU leaders set to back opening of phase-two Brexit talks

EU leaders meeting over the next two days in Brussels are set to give unanimous backing to the opening of the next phase of Brexit negotiations.

At preparatory meetings for the European Council, ministers and officials have backed European Commission recommendations that "sufficient progress" in phase one talks have been made, endorsing Friday's joint report from the commission and UK negotiators, and setting out guidelines for the new talks which will also copperfasten Friday's commitments against "backsliding".

The guidelines provide that discussions on phase two will continue “as long as all commitments undertaken in the first phase are respected in full and translated faithfully into legal terms”. This is a specific reference to the “withdrawal treaty” that will have to be approved by member state parliaments before Brexit.

Unusually, the leaders come together for three summits in one. On Thursday afternoon and evening, over dinner, a traditional European Council of 28 member states will debate issues from migration to education and social rights.

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On Friday morning, a euro-summit will discuss the future of monetary union, at which 19 euro states making any decisions will be joined by eight aspirant euro states. This will be followed by an “Article 50” summit of the 27 Remainer states to discuss the state of Brexit negotiations.

Defence framework

In yet another separate formation, 25 of the member states, Ireland included, will on Thursday evening hold a ceremony to dedicate the launch of the defence co-operation framework, Permanent Structured Co-operation (Pesco).

Following Dáil approval, Ireland signed up in recent days to Pesco, which provides a forum for pooling and sharing in 17 defence-related research and  training projects.

The broad consensus apparent on Brexit may not be reflected in other discussions at the summit. Sharp differences are likely to re-emerge over migration policy in a debate proposed by European Council president Donald Tusk, whose letter to leaders setting out the agenda has prompted serious recriminations.

At issue primarily is Mr Tusk’s contention that attempts to disperse asylum seekers by means of controversial mandatory quotas have not worked. “The issue of mandatory quotas has proven to be highly divisive and the approach has turned out to be ineffective,” he writes.

He wants leaders to commit to forging by next June a new consensus on how to reform the so-called Dublin regulations – under which the country in which asylum-seekers arrive is responsible for them – but his approach has been denounced by one commissioner as "un-European" and tantamount to abandoning front line receiving states such as Greece and Italy.

A minority of states, including Hungary and the Czech Republic, which are refusing to take in their quotas of asylum-seekers, insist they can manifest their solidarity with Italy and Greece by other means.

Mr Tusk is more likely to win support for his call for the establishment of a permanent dedicated fund drawn from the EU budget to deal specifically with migration and that the current system of ad hoc financial pledging is inadequate to the scale of the challenge.

Timeline for reforms

He also hopes to kickstart decision-making on completing key elements of monetary union by setting out a timeline for reforms that enjoy broad support among leaders. These include putting into operation a common backstop for the EU’s banking crisis mechanism, the Single Resolution Fund; further developing the European Stability Mechanism, possibly to become a so-called European Monetary Fund; and other measures to complete the banking union.

On Brexit, Mr Tusk, who has warned negotiations are set to become more difficult, says in his letter to leaders that “the conclusion of the first phase of negotiations is moderate progress, since we only have 10 months left to determine the transition period and our future relations with the UK.

"This will be a furious race against time, where again our unity will be key. And the experience so far has shown that unity is a sine qua non of an orderly Brexit."