Is Emmanuel Macron set to sink Brexit deal with French veto?

Diplomats warn EU negotiators not to give too many concessions to win agreement

Emmanuel Macron gives the opening speech of a video international donor conference for Lebanon at the Elysee palace.

France is poised to veto a post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and EU if Paris is unhappy with the terms of the agreement, according to a leaked diplomatic note.

Bloomberg reports that the internal document reveals how the French ambassador to the EU yesterday “warned chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier of how bad it would look if he brokered a deal only to see it vetoed by EU leaders”. The veiled threat, at a meeting in Brussels of the bloc’s 27 ambassadors, piles pressure on the EU negotiating team “not to make further concessions as talks build to a climax”, says the news site.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Joe Evans is the world news editor at TheWeek.co.uk. He joined the team in 2019 and held roles including deputy news editor and acting news editor before moving into his current position in early 2021. He is a regular panellist on The Week Unwrapped podcast, discussing politics and foreign affairs. 

Before joining The Week, he worked as a freelance journalist covering the UK and Ireland for German newspapers and magazines. A series of features on Brexit and the Irish border got him nominated for the Hostwriter Prize in 2019. Prior to settling down in London, he lived and worked in Cambodia, where he ran communications for a non-governmental organisation and worked as a journalist covering Southeast Asia. He has a master’s degree in journalism from City, University of London, and before that studied English Literature at the University of Manchester.