The prime minister reiterated her commitment to control immigration into Britain while maintaining access to the European single markets for trade and services, something other leaders say is impossible.
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“But it’s about sustainable levels and I believe those sustainable levels are in the tens of thousands”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out preliminary talks with the United Kingdom government on exiting the European Union while offering Prime Minister Theresa May space to decide when her government would be ready to invoke the legal notification necessary.
The trip to Berlin was Mrs May’s first foreign visit since becoming Prime Minister and she was desperate to create a good impression upon the German Chancellor, who she hopes will become a powerful ally.
The decision, reached in a phone call between May and EU Council President Donald Tusk on Tuesday evening, reflects the scale of the task facing Britain as it seeks to negotiate a new relationship with the EU after a June 23 public vote to leave.
May is in Berlin Wednesday for talks with Merkel.
The UK already announced today it was giving up its rotating presidency of the EU Council, set for the end of 2017, to Estonia.
British diplomats also acknowledge that the team May has put together to steer Brexit talks has a starry-eyed view of what concessions London can win from the EU and say their European counterparts need to deliver this message to them directly.
“This will take time and it will require serious and detailed work”. Another came when a German journalist asked May what she was thinking when she appointed Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson as her foreign secretary. Merkel appeared to soften her impatience over London’s delay in triggering the start of formal negotiations, and signaled a willingness to give May’s new government time to figure out what it wants. “She will be anxious to convey that she’s not a soft touch”.
May and Merkel are both down to earth politicians with a no-nonsense style.
May has repeatedly asked for patience as her new government maps out its strategy for ending its 43-year-old membership of the European Union despite some European Union countries wanting Britain out of the bloc as soon as possible.
“For the moment at least, five years of steady economic growth and falling unemployment means that many people feel well-insulated from the potential downsides of the vote”, Mintel research director Toby Clark said in a statement.
Observers in both Britain and Germany have drawn comparisons between Merkel and May: both pastors’ daughters with supportive husbands, happy to stay out of the limelight, who rose to become leaders of centre-right parties. Merkel said later on Wednesday that it was normal for Britain to take some time to figure out its Brexit strategy but that a lengthy period of limbo was in no one’s interests.
However, she has also warned that Britain can not have continued access to the single market while restricting the freedom of European Union citizens to emigrate to Britain – the key issue in the June 23 referendum.
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PM May is due to have talks with France’s Francois Hollande on Thursday.
