LONDON (Reuters) – Britain needs to work intensively into July with the EU to make progress in trade talks, and negotiations cannot drag on into October, a senior British negotiating official said on Friday.
“October is too late for us to do this,” the official said. “We need to work intensively now and into July to find the high level trade-offs that unlock a deal within all our important negotiating parameters.”
The official said face to face meetings were needed to make progress and that Britain was committed to upholding the political declaration which set out the negotiating parameters, but that the EU had a different interpretation of what this meant.
Reporting by William James and Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison
