In a fresh diplomacy drive, UK targets Europe’s Brexit skeptics

Bloomberg

Theresa May’s government will step up its diplomatic efforts to win over skeptical European leaders as part of the UK’s drive to push stalled Brexit talks forward from discussing divorce to the future of trade.
Brexit Secretary David Davis plans meetings in London and various EU capitals with senior officials from Germany and elsewhere, amid concerns that some member states don’t fully appreciate the scale of May’s efforts or the progress of talks so far, a person familiar with the matter said.
The UK is desperate to persuade the EU to allow Brexit talks to discuss the future free-trade agreement that May wants. But first, May’s team must satisfy leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel that “sufficient progress”
has been made on settling the terms of the separation.
Britain has until March 2019 to negotiate its withdrawal from the 28-member bloc and wants to start talking about the future relatio-nship and a two-year transition period after the next European
summit in December, when leaders will decide whether progress has been good enough.
Talks are hung up over how much money the UK will pay when it leaves, and May’s administration has so far failed to respond to the EU’s offer of at least two rounds of negotiations before the leaders gather on December 14.
British officials regard France
and Germany as the key member states to convince. So far, both Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have been unwill-ing to allow negotiations to move on to trade.
Last week, Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson travelled to Paris to meet French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. Johnson also met Augusto Santos Silva, Portugal’s foreign minister, on Oct. 27 and appealed for help to break the deadlock in Brexit talks. Plans are being made for similar outreach to Germany, as Merkel works to form a new coalition government, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because details are not yet public.
UK officials think Davis’s counterpart, EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier, understands how much ground the talks have covered since they began in June. Despite this, the governments of countries such as France and Germany lag in appreciating the progress, the person familiar with the matter said.