EU PREPARES NO-DEAL OPTIONS AS UK IS SET TO BREAK BREXIT TREATY

The European Union was on Friday ramping up preparations for a tumultuous end to the four-year Brexit saga as top officials prepared to brief its 27 members on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to break the divorce treaty, Guy Faulconbridge and Gabriela Baczynska reported for Reuters.

In one of the most extraordinary turns since the 2016 Brexit referendum, Britain explicitly said this week that it plans to break international law by breaching parts of the Withdrawal Agreement treaty that is signed in January.

Johnson’s move, which Britain says is aimed at clarifying ambiguities, plunged Brexit into crisis less than four months before the United Kingdom (UK) is due to leave the EU’s orbit at the end of the so called transition period which ends in December.

The EU has ordered Britain to scrap the plan by the end of September but Britain bluntly refused and said its parliament was sovereign above international law. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on Thursday, after talks in London, that the bloc was stepping up plans for a no-deal Brexit at the end of this year as trade talks had made little progress. “The UK has not engaged in a reciprocal way on fundamental EU principles and interests,” Barnier said. “Nobody should underestimate the practical, economic and social consequences of a ‘no deal’ scenario.”

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