Britain’s May Climbs Down as European Union Loses Brexit Patience

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It had been billed as a “moment of truth” for the tortuous Brexit negotiations that have dragged on for more than a year.

But like so many other Brexit encounters, a pre-dinner meeting Wednesday between Britain’s Theresa May and the 27 other national leaders of the European Union passed without the bang of a grand finale or without a breakthrough on Britain’s future relationship with its most important trading partners.

To the fury of hardline Brexiters in May’s ruling Conservative Party, the biggest takeaway from the Brussels meeting is Britain and its negotiating partners could be heading for many months more of convoluted talks. The British prime minister told her counterparts she would be open to the idea of prolonging Britain’s transition out of the bloc beyond the previously earmarked December 2020.

Her concession of a longer transition is part of a bid to break a deadlock over how to avoid border checks being reimposed along the 500-kilometer frontier separating the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland when Britain leaves the European Union.

May committed last year to keeping the border open between the two parts of the island of Ireland, even if Britain leaves the bloc without an exit agreement or a free trade deal. The Irish government is insisting the border remain open as Britain agreed to removing checkpoints in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement — a peace deal struck between London, Dublin and most political parties and armed factions in Northern Ireland that brought to an end decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Britain officially is to leave the bloc in March and to have agreed to an exit deal well before then, but London and Brussels previously had agreed there would be a transition period to conclude at the end of 2020, by which time both sides hope some kind of trade agreement also would have been concluded.