Theresa May has issued a stark warning to EU leaders that their citizens lives will be at risk if they fail to show more flexibility on Brexit, as she struggled to regain the initiative at a bad-tempered summit in Brussels.
The prime minister had earlier faced pointed criticism from a succession of leaders as they arrived at the European council meeting, in which they highlighted division and indecision at Westminster.
The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, told reporters: “I don’t have to lecture Theresa May, but I would like our British friends to make clear their position.
We cannot go on to live with a split cabinet. They have to say what they want and we will respond to that.
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, expressed the concern of many that it was increasingly unclear who was directing government policy on Brexit, with May’s cabinet continuing to publicly clash over the future.
He said: I don’t want to talk in apocalyptic terms, but what I want to say is I believe the first, second and third priority now is to solve this issue of the Irish border.
When asked if the EU was being too rigid in its approach, he said: The problem is to whom should we listen because our contact of course is Theresa May.
I know she is working day and night to solve this but the first issue on the table we have to solve now is the Irish border.
The Irish PM, Leo Varadkar, said the UK still mistakenly appeared to believe it was an equal partner in the talks. He suggested that the government was two years too late in sketching out its vision of a post-Brexit relationship with the EU.
The taoiseach said: We [spent] two years telling people that it can’t be cherrypicking, it can’t be cake and eat it, so it [the white paper] needs to understand we are a union.
We have laws and rules and principles and they can’t be changed for any one country, even a country like Britain. Any relationship in the future between the EU and UK isn’t going to be one of absolute equals.
We’re 27 member states, the EU is one country, we’re 500 million people, the UK is 60 million, so that basic fact needs to be realised and understood.
Later, May chose to use her allotted slot at a working dinner to hit back, telling EU27 leaders that what the UK regards as intransigence by Brussels was jeopardising information-sharing on security and could ultimately put lives at risk.
With the cabinet still deeply divided over a series of other issues, from customs to migration controls, security is one of the few areas where May can point to unity – and on which the UK believes it has a strong negotiating position.
When you meet as 27 tomorrow, I would urge you to consider what is in the best interests of the safety of your citizens and mine, and give your negotiators a mandate that will allow us to achieve this crucial objective, she told EU leaders.
Brussels has insisted the UK will not be able to participate in information-sharing schemes such as ECRIS (European Criminal Records Information System) and Prüm, through which EU authorities track criminals and terrorists, once it is a third country.
But the British government hopes EU capitals will put pressure on the European commission to take a more flexible approach.
A senior government official said the UK had received 163,000 requests from other EU countries for criminal records information in the ECRIS database in 2017, and provided 2,500 DNA profiles under the auspices of the Prüm treaty.
He added that other EU countries had put obstacles in the way of reaching an agreement on mapping the movement of terrorists and criminals, and sharing vital information.
May told her fellow leaders that without a shift in the EU’s stance we will no longer be able to share real-time alerts for wanted persons, including criminals.
We would be able to respond less swiftly to alerts for missing people, either side of the Channel, and reunite them with their loved ones.
And our collective ability to map terrorist networks across Europe and bring those responsible to justice would be reduced. That is not what I want, and I do not believe that is what you want either.
The GCHQ chief, Jeremy Fleming, revealed recently that Britain supplied key information to break up terrorist networks in four European countries last year – and suggested such information-sharing would continue after Brexit.
Those relationships, and our ability to work together, save lives. That will continue after Brexit, for the benefit of the UK and our partners across Europe, he said.
The prime minister’s robust intervention came after her former chief of staff Nick Timothy used an editorial in the Telegraph to urge his former boss to toughen up in her dealings with Brussels, saying that the the time for playing nice and being exploited is over.
May will hold a meeting of her warring cabinet at Chequers a week on Friday, in the hope of uniting them behind a negotiating position, before the intended publication of a white paper on Britain’s future relationship with the EU the following week.
Arriving in Brussels on Thursday afternoon, May brushed off claims of cabinet disunity, and insisted she was ready to press ahead with Brexit talks at pace.
She insisted the two sides had made, very good progress on the withrawal agreement, adding: I think both sides are keen to continue their work at a faster pace than we have done up till now, and we certainly would welcome that.
Beyond the need to hear a coherent vision for the future trading relationship, EU leaders were most concerned by the absence of any progress on avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland.
A UK-Ireland summit in London is now planned for 25 July, where the Irish government hopes to make definitive progress on the problem of the border.
Juncker said: We are preparing, in parallel, on a no deal. We have to do it. I would like us to give the final definite response on the Irish problem … I wouldn’t like us to be in a situation where the last remaining problem would be the Irish problem. This has to be in the package.
The 27 EU leaders will sign off on a statement on Friday morning, calling for intensified work in the talks, and offering a grave warning of the threat of the UK leaving the bloc on 29 March 2019 without a deal or transition period agreed.