A good relationship at the end of this process depends on it,” the prime minister said. May was speaking after returning from an EU summit in Salzburg Thursday, where her fellow leaders condemned her proposals for post-Brexit trading ties and the Irish border. Making a mistakeThe EU summit in Salzburg was intended as a staging post in the negotiations, but leaders savaged May’s plan — and demanded she come back with an alternative by an EU summit in mid-October. Meanwhile its alternative offer of a free trade agreement was contingent on a “backstop” keeping the British province of Northern Ireland aligned with EU rules, “something no British prime minister would ever agree to”. “Perhaps a sense was created that Prime Minister May would come away with something more positive than occurred, but I don’t think anyone in the EU or Ireland is to blame for that,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Friday.

Source: The Guardian September 21, 2018 14:37 UTC