Britain's Prime minister
Theresa May attends the One Planet Summit at the Seine Musicale
center in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, France, December 12,
2017.
REUTERS/Benoit
Tessier
Charles Ries, who helped negotiate NAFTA, believes
Theresa May complicated Brexit discussions by triggering
Article 50 too quickly and said the hardest part of
negotiations are still to come.
"The British never made an attempt to have serious
conversations at the summit level about what the onward
relationship would be before they invoked Article 50," said
Ries.
LONDON — A diplomat who negotiated NAFTA believes Theresa
May complicated Brexit discussions by triggering Article 50 too
quickly and said the hardest part of negotiations are still to
come.
"The British never made an attempt to have serious conversations
at the summit level about what the onward relationship would be
before they invoked Article 50," said Ambassador Charles Ries,
vice president of the RAND Corporation.
Ries is a former US diplomat whose career included
posts overseeing the US-European Union relationship and working
as a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
negotiating team, which created the world's largest free trade
agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United
States.
Ries acknowledged that the European Commission rigidly followed
its "‘no negotiations without notification" doctrine and
refused to discuss "end-state" matters with Britain until it
received formal notice of its intention to leave the bloc. He
insisted, however, that negotiations would have been easier had
the prime minister waited before triggering Article 50 so that
each side had a better understanding of their respective
aims.
"If the Prime Minister had waited before invoking
Article 50, until there was a general understanding among the
alliance that we agree, ahead of time, what the end point was
going to be, that makes it a lot easier on negotiations," he
said.
"There was never any attempt to do that, partially I think
because the British system and Whitehall didn't know what they
were looking for at this stage but there was a political
imperative to act, so as to make it irreversible."
"That decision has made it more difficult now. Time is short and
you're finally getting to the real heart of the matter which is
the future trade and economic relationship. The second part
is the hardest part. The endgame will be complex.
"At the heart of the matter — the choices Britain must make — are
still ahead of them," he said.
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