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No-deal Brexit will never be EU’s decision, says Donald Tusk

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Bruno Waterfield, Brussels
October 22 2019, 12:00pm,
The Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-deal-brexit-will-never-be-eu-s-decision-says-donald-tusk-k7wkqn999

The European Union will not let Britain leave without a deal as long as the House of Commons continues to demand delays to Brexit.

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, has declared that EU leaders will not permit a no-deal Brexit whatever the circumstances over the coming days or weeks.

“We should be ready for every scenario, but one thing must be clear, as I said to Prime Minister Johnson on Saturday, a no-deal Brexit will never be our decision,” he told MEPs today.

The comments are deeply unhelpful to the prime minister because they send a message to MPs that the Commons does not need to rush through ratification of the withdrawal agreement bill in time for October 31 and that a Brexit extension is a certainty under the Benn Act.

The pledge, which is known to be the position of European leaders, even including President Macron of France, will also have implications for Mr Johnson as MPs attempt to block the possibility of a no-deal Brexit after the planned transition period next year.

In a new barrier to Brexit by the end of the month, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief negotiator, today demanded new concessions from the government on the rights of EU nationals before MEPs ratify the deal.

He said that up to 200,000 European nationals would miss a government deadline to register for settled status and would be at risk of deportation in a repeat of the Windrush scandal, when Commonwealth citizens entitled to live in Britain were deported under fast-track Home Office rules.

“There will be no deportation of these people,” he said. “Before we give our consent I want these problems resolved. We do not want EU citizens involved in another Windrush scandal in Britain. That cannot happen.”

After MPs failed to approve Mr Johnson’s deal in a straightforward one-off vote at the weekend, the Conservative leader was forced to send a letter to Mr Tusk asking for Brexit to be delayed for three months under the terms of the Benn Act.

Mr Tusk, one of the EU’s most vocal supporters of overturning the Brexit decision, is expected to recommend the third delay to Brexit in the “coming day”.

“Extension… through this you show common sense and a sense of dignity. I have no doubt that we should treat the British request for extension in all seriousness,” he said.

Creating extra problems in the Commons for Mr Johnson, Mr Tusk described the new deal as essentially the same as Theresa May’s old agreement that was blocked in the Commons three times, except for a new British concession on customs checks between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland.

“It is based on the deal that we agreed with the previous government,” he said. “Johnson’s acceptance to have customs checks at the points of entry into Northern Ireland will allow us to avoid border checks between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The revised deal was possible and acceptable to the EU because firstly it had the support of Ireland, secondly it had the support of the EU commission, ensuring that all our negotiating objectives were met.”

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, whose term in the post ends at the end of next month, complained that Brexit had dominated his time in the EU’s top job and was a “waste of time and waste of energy”.

He confirmed his support for the European Parliament to wait until ratification was complete in Westminster, including the House of Lords, before approving the deal, pushing any possible Brexit date back until late November at the earliest.

“We need now to watch events in Westminster very closely, but it’s not possible, not imaginable that this parliament would ratify the agreement before Westminster has ratified the agreement. First London, then Brussels, then Strasbourg,” he told MEPs meeting in the French seat of the EU assembly.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-deal-brexit-will-never-be-eu-s-decision-says-donald-tusk-k7wkqn999