Boris Johnson yesterday said that a Brexit deal was beginning to emerge, but the EU said he offered nothing to break the impasse during a visit to Luxembourg where he was harangued loudly by protesters and rebuked for trying to shift the blame.
“Don’t make the EU the bad guy,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said after a meeting with Johnson, describing the uncertainty over the timing and conditions of Britain’s exit from the European Union as a “nightmare”.
The British prime minister joined European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker for lunch at the Bouquet Garni restaurant, an 18th-century building of bare stone walls and low ceilings in the medieval heart of Luxembourg.
Johnson was heckled from start of his visit with dozens of Britons — many of them retirees living in Luxembourg — booing, chanting and holding banners outside the restaurant.
The crowd and the booing swelled when he went on to meet Bettel, where at least 50 protesters waiting behind the gates created a scene that seemed out of place in the usually sedate centre of Luxembourg.
There were chants of “Fascist!”, “Stop the coup! Tell the truth!” and “Shame on Boris”, and the protesters played bursts of music that included the EU’s “Ode to Joy” anthem and “I can’t get no satisfaction”.
Johnson was due to address journalists alongside Bettel in the courtyard after their meeting but left straight away, saying later that it wouldn’t have been fair on the Luxembourg prime minister to hold a news conference amid a din of protests.
With less than seven weeks until Britain is due to leave the EU, Johnson has yet to reach an agreement with Brussels on how to manage the separation between the world’s fifth-largest economy and its biggest trading partner.
Johnson is hoping a Brexit deal can be clinched at an EU summit on October 17-18.
“Yes, there is a good chance of a deal, yes I can see the shape of it, everybody can see roughly what could be done,” he told reporters after his Luxembourg meetings.
However, the European Commission said London had still not proposed an alternative to the Irish backstop that has stymied a deal on Britain’s exit from the EU, giving a more downbeat read-out of the meeting between Juncker and Johnson.
Johnson reiterated that Britain would leave the European Union on its October 31 divorce date, deal or no deal, and would not request a delay.
However, his office said it had been agreed at the Luxembourg lunch that talks to find a deal would intensify.
Negotiations would be raised to a political level — between EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and Britain’s Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay — from the technical-level talks of recent weeks, and meetings would take place daily.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves after a meeting with EU Commission president and officials at the Ministere d’Etat in Luxembourg.
