European Union officials are examining plans to delay Brexit until 2020 after Germany and France indicated their willingness to extend withdrawal negotiations because of Britain’s political turmoil.
Diplomats and officials are preparing a longer than envisaged extension of the EU’s Article 50 exit procedure because the extent of Theresa May’s defeat in the House of Commons last night.
Previous planning had centred on a three-month delay to Brexit from March 29 until the end of June but now, according to multiple sources, EU officials are investigating legal routes to postpone Britain’s withdrawal until next year.
Peter Altmaier, Germany’s economy minister, who is close to Angela Merkel, the chancellor, and to Martin Selmayr, the powerful German head of the EU’s civil service, said that Britain needed an extension to find a consensus on the way forward after the vote.
“The European Union should allow for additional time in order to achieve a clear position by the British parliament and people,” he told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. “I would see this as a reasonable request.”
President Macron of France said late on Tuesday night that he expected the prime minister to tell other EU leaders that “we’re going to take more time to renegotiate something”.
“Maybe they will take more time and step over the European elections in order to find something else,” he said.
Nathalie Loiseau, his European affairs minister, said that a delay to Brexit was feasible but that Britain needed to make the request quickly.
“Legally, technically, it’s possible,” she told the France Inter public broadcaster. “It is not up to us Europeans to tell the British what to do.
“What we can tell them is hurry up because March 29 is soon.”
It came as Mrs May defended her record in the face of Jeremy Corbyn’s motion of no confidence. The prime minister said that a general election would be “the worst thing we could do” because “it would deepen division when we need unity, it would bring chaos when we need certainty and it would bring delay when we need to move forward”.
Mr Corbyn said that the prime minister’s “zombie government” should make way after her “Frankenstein” Brexit deal had been “decisively rejected”.
EU and Brussels sources said that officials were working on a legally watertight way to extend British membership, postponing Brexit, beyond Europe-wide elections on May 23 and later than the first sitting of the new European parliament on July 2.
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