Foreign policy chiefs of Germany's ruling conservative alliance in parliament have criticized EU's tough line on Brexit, German media reported Friday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th September, 2018) Foreign policy chiefs of Germany's ruling conservative alliance in parliament have criticized EU's tough line on Brexit, German media reported Friday.
Berlin stands with the rest of the union in demanding that London recognize its core principle - the free movement of goods, finances, services, and people - if it wants to access its tariff-free single market.
"You cannot negotiate Brexit by constantly repeating EU dogmas," Norbert Roettingen, foreign committee chairman and senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, told Spiegel.
The lawmaker said that he regretted the UK's withdrawal from the European Union - due on March 29, 2019 - but added that the remaining countries had to make Brexit work.
Johann Wadephul, deputy chair of the governing alliance's parliamentary group in charge of foreign policy who also sits in the foreign affairs committee, stood by Roettingen.
"The UN will not become some third country in the future, hence setting unrealistic conditions is not in our best interest," he told the online magazine.
EU leaders rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's vision of UK's future ties with the 27-member union last week at the EU summit in Salzburg, Austria, making a no-deal exit a possibility. If no agreement is reached, London and Brussels will have to negotiate a trade pact.
