Alternative Brexit plans 'detached from reality'

EU voices concerns over plans coming from Westminster

As members of the United Kingdom Parliament prepare for a fourth vote on Prime Minister Theresa May's proposals to take the country out of the European Union, EU officials have voiced concern that alternative plans being suggested reveal a fundamental lack of understanding of what is going on.

In July 2016 the British electorate voted to leave the 28-nation trading bloc, a process which should have been completed last Friday. But the issue has caused huge divisions in British politics and society. So far May's EU-approved withdrawal terms have been rejected by Parliament three times, and subsequently the process known as Article 50 has had to be extended, until April 12.

If terms cannot be agreed, on that date the country is on course for a so-called no-deal or hard Brexit, which means leaving without any alternative arrangements in place for legislation relating to Britain's ties with its European neighbors, covering everything from imports of goods to environmental protection.

There are fears this would cause widespread economic and social disruption, so some of the alternatives being debated alongside May's are for a softer Brexit.

However, EU officials say their exit terms agreed with May are non-negotiable, and any further extension beyond April 12 makes involvement in the upcoming European Parliament elections unavoidable.

"The discussion in London seems as always a bit detached from how the reality looks in EU 27 capitals,"an official told the Financial Times newspaper."The withdrawal agreement is closed. Time is running out."

One option, which would be hugely contentious, is to revoke the Article 50 legislation and abandon the whole process. Apart from this, the official said, the only alternatives are backing May's deal or"the UK asks for an extension beyond May 22 (the day before the elections start), in which case it must participate in the European Parliament elections."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the EU should exhaust every alternative before accepting no-deal, and an emergency summit on Brexit has been called by European Council President Donald Tusk for April 10.

While the on-going uncertainty is frustrating many businesses, the expected jobs exodus from London's financial sector has failed to materialize, after banks scaled down estimates of how many jobs to relocate to Europe to deal with life post-Brexit.

The Financial Times reports that so far, since July 2016,London's top 15 international banks have shed fewer than 3,500 jobs, with less than half of those losses being linked to Brexit.

The UK head of the US bank Citigroup said a combination of budget management and preparing for the worst had made the reality less challenging than expected. So far, the company has moved just 80 jobs out of London, and still has 6000 workers there.

"We all made our worst-case assumptions but have found in practice that we have been able to keep to a tight budget in terms of the minimum'day zero'establishment,"said James Baldrick.

Swiss bank UBS has increased its UK payroll since the Brexit vote, and BNP Paribas's purchase of a British property company in 2017 has also seen it take on more staff.