EU warns Britain that ‘time will be short’ to negotiate Brexit terms once talks begin

Britain may not have two years to negotiate its divorce from the EU after all. The EU’s chief negotiator on Brexit warned on Tuesday that the country will have less than 18 months once talks begin. Nor will Britain be allowed to pick and choose what parts of the EU it wants to keep.

The British government, meanwhile, agreed for the first time to publish details of its plans for Brexit before formal talks start – though how much detail it would disclose remained an open question.

While steering away from specifics on what a Brexit deal might look like, EU negotiator Michel Barnier, who took up his post months ago after Britain voted in June to leave the EU, said formal procedures at the start and end of the talks will cut into the time Britain has to leave.

“Time will be short,” he said. “All in all there will be less than 18 months to negotiate.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May wants to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s key treaty, which will officially kick off two years of exit talks, by the end of March.

But Barnier, who has visited 18 of the EU’s 28 member states to gauge views on Britain’s withdrawal, warned that the effective negotiating time will be less due to procedures such as parliamentary approvals to rubber-stamp any deal.

If May sticks to her timetable, Barnier said an agreement may have to be secured by October 2018 to get a final agreement in place by March 2019 – two years on from the triggering of Article 50.