David Davis: Barnier’s Brexit stance looks ‘silly’

Brussels is playing down progress to pressure Britain to pay up, says chief UK negotiator.

EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier looked “a bit silly” when he said there had been no major progress in the talks on Britain’s departure from the bloc, his U.K. counterpart David Davis said Sunday.

Barnier said after the latest round of talks ended Thursday that there had been no “decisive progress on the principal subjects” and he was far from being able to recommend to EU leaders that negotiations should move from departure arrangements to the future relationship between the EU and the U.K.

But Davis, Britain’s Brexit secretary, said the two sides had reached agreement on important issues such as health insurance for British citizens living elsewhere in the EU. He said Barnier and the European Commission were trying to put pressure on London to agree on a financial “divorce settlement.”

“They’ve set this up to try and create pressure on us on money. That’s what this is about — they’re trying to play time against money,” Davis told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

“He wants to put pressure on us, which is why [there was] the stance this week in the press conference. Bluntly, I think it looked a bit silly because there plainly were things that we’ve achieved,” he said.

Asked specifically if he was saying Barnier looked a bit silly, Davis replied: “The Commission, not so much him. I mean, I like him, I’ve known him for 20 years. But the Commission puts itself in a silly position if it says nothing has been done.”

His comments come amid increasingly visible tensions between Brussels and London over the talks. The EU insists on “sufficient progress” in sorting out the divorce — including a so-called Brexit bill for the U.K.’s outstanding financial obligations to the bloc — before moving on to discuss the terms of future economic relations. British officials counter that Brussels is being inflexible.

The slow pace of the talks is raising the levels of frustration and concern in the British capital that at this rate the U.K. may leave the EU in March 2019 without even a transitional trade agreement, dealing a blow to an already shaky economy.

“We put people before process,” Davis added. “What they’re in danger of doing is putting process before people.”

Davis also said a Sunday Times report that Prime Minister Theresa May was set to approve a divorce payment of  “up to £50 billion” to the EU was “completely wrong.”