Stockholm
Brexit minister David Davis said on Tuesday the government was on course to meet its end-March deadline to launch the formal divorce procedure from the European Union but did not see Britain doing so at an EU summit next month. EU officials are keen to know when Prime Minister Theresa May will trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty and launch some of the most complicated talks Britain has held since World War Two to end its more than 40-year membership of the bloc.
In Stockholm, Davis was asked whether he expected May to deliver the Article 50 letter at an EU summit in Brussels on March 9 and 10 – a date some British media had said was under consideration to avoid any clash with a summit of the other 27 states on March 25 to celebrate the bloc’s 60th anniversary. “The 9th or 10th is not a date I recognise in terms of our timetable. What we have said is by the end of March, sometime during March,” Davis said alongside Ann Linde, Sweden’s minister for EU Affairs and Trade.
