Britain will have less than 18 months to negotiate Brexit and must end up with a worse deal than it currently has as an EU member, the bloc’s chief negotiator has said.
In remarks that seemed to surprise London, Michel Barnier said the EU would need time to define its stance at the start of the two-year exit process, and the European parliament, EU-27 and UK government several months to ratify it at the end.
Adding to the pressure on the government as Theresa May accepted a Labour demand that the government publish its plan for Brexit before triggering article 50, Barnier also said it was “difficult to imagine” an interim deal bridging Britain’s departure from the bloc and any future trade agreement.
“Time will be very short,” the former finance commissioner stressed in his first press conference since taking up the post in October. “It’s clear that the period of actual negotiations will be shorter than two years. All in all, there will be less than 18 months to negotiate.”
Barnier, who has visited 18 EU countries in recent weeks to hammer out a common position on Brexit and aims to hold talks in all 27 remaining members by the end of January, said the EU would base its approach on four key principles.
It would seek first to preserve the unity and interests of its 27 remaining members, he said, and refuse all negotiation before notification. Brexit must be an inferior deal for Britain than EU membership, and curbs on free movement were not compatible with full access to the single market.
“Being in the EU comes with rights and benefits – third countries can never have the same rights and benefits,” he said in Brussels. “The single market and its four freedoms are indivisible. Cherry picking is not an option.”
Barnier said that if the UK triggered article 50 by the end of March, as Theresa May has said she would, formal negotiations on Britain’s departure from the EU could start “a few weeks later”, but agreement would need to be reached by October 2018 to allow time for ratification.
His substantive remarks on the EU’s position came in contrast to comments on Tuesday from May. Amid all the terms – hard, soft, black, white, grey – coined for variations of Brexit, the prime minister said on a visit to Bahrain that “what Britain was actually looking for is a red, white and blue Brexit”.
“That is the right deal for the United Kingdom, what is going to be the right relationship for the UK with the European Union once we’ve left,” May said, without elaborating on what she meant. “That’s what we’re about, that’s what we’ll be working on.”
The continuing opacity of the UK’s Brexit strategy has led to mounting recent frustration in European capitals. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, called bluntly on Tuesday for a fundamentally “different attitude” from the UK.
“The things I have been hearing so far are incompatible with smooth, and incompatible with orderly,” Dijsselbloem, who also chairs the 19-strong group of eurozone countries, said at a meeting of the group in Brussels.
Responding to May’s comments, the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, called the slogan “jingoistic claptrap” and said it showed no further policy development. “The prime minister has surpassed herself with this statement,” he said.
Downing St sources admitted Barnier’s comments were the first time it had been made aware EU officials wanted to complete Brexit negotiations within 18 months, but said the Brexit process belonged to the UK as much as to the EU.
“It is the first I had heard of it,” the sources said, adding that the Brexit broker’s remarks had “not been the focus of the prime minister’s day”. But Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, appeared unconcerned.
“I think that with a fair wind and everybody acting in a positive and a comprising mood … we can get a great deal for the UK and for the rest of Europe within that timeframe,” he said. “That timeframe seems to me to be absolutely ample.”
Underlining the EU’s unusual solidarity on the issue, Barnier’s comments were echoed by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who told a conference of her CDU party in Berlin that the “have-cake-and-eat-it” deal apparently sought by London was not on offer.
“The four freedoms - free movement for people, goods, services and financial market products – must be safeguarded,” Merkel said. “Only then can there be access to the single market. We will not allow cherry-picking.”
Barnier said there may be “some point and usefulness” to an interim arrangement to avoid the economic turmoil feared by many British businesses if article 50 talks end and Britain leaves the EU with no future trade agreement yet concluded.
But he said that could only be considered once Britain had explained exactly what it wanted from its future relationship with the EU, and the bloc had established what it could accept.
The EU “needs to know what the new partnership with Britain would look like to weigh up the usefulness of a transitional deal”, Barnier said. “As we don’t know what the UK wants and is waiting for, it’s difficult to imagine one.”
He declined to discuss what kind of future relationship might be possible, though he cited the example of Norway, which accepts free migration and pays the EU in return for access to EU markets.
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, confirmed in Brussels on Tuesday that Britain could continue to pay for access to some parts of the single market.
On the debate in Britain over a hard Brexit, leaving the UK outside the single market, or a soft Brexit preserving more ties, Barnier said he could not say what the difference was.
“I can say what Brexit is,” he said. “We want a clear agreement, we want to reach this agreement in the limited time we have available and we want it to take account of our point of view, the interests of the 27 as defined by the European council, and [be] something that preserves the unity of the 27.”
Europe had assembled a solid team combining all the necessary expertise and would be ready to begin talks as soon as it received formal notification, Barnier said, but added that everyone involved in Brexit was entering uncharted waters.