President Radev Expects Difficult Talks on Financial Matters with London

President Rumen Radev Saturday said financial matters could be the hardest part of the future talks on the UK's withdrawal from the EU.

Radev told Bulgarian reporters after participating in the Extraordinary European Council: "Today was an important day, we adopted the political guidelines for the Brexit negotiations. This will not be an easy process at all, it will be fraught with problems. The bottom line is that the EU leaders rallied around common goals: to ensure that the rights of citizens, businesses, the individual countries and the EU as a whole are protected. The core principles, the approach to the talks and the priorities were adopted."

If this process is to be successful, the principles of equality, transparency and unity should be clear from now, said Radev. "We concurred that we would negotiate from a unified position," he added.

A directive laying down the criteria, the stages of the talks and the objectives at each stage will be adopted on May 22. Hopefully, the first stage will be completed in October, Radev said. It is during Bulgaria's Presidency of the EU Council in 2018 that [the outcome of] the second stage will be decided. The talks are to be completed in October 2018, so that after ratification, the UK's withdrawal will become a fact by March 29, 2019.

 

 

BTA