LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May said Friday she was beginning preparations to hold an election for the European Parliament despite her country’s desire to quit the European Union, an acknowledgment that its divorce efforts could be significantly delayed.
In a letter to a top E.U. official, May asked for Britain’s departure date from the European Union to be delayed until June 30 and said she would order a vote in late May to elect British members of the European Parliament, assuming Britain is still an E.U. member. Without a reprieve from the other 27 leaders of E.U. nations, Britain is due to crash out of the club without a safety net on April 12.
May’s government is “undertaking the lawful and responsible preparations” for an election, May said in her letter to European Council President Donald Tusk. She said that if Britain and the European Union manage to ratify a divorce deal before late May, she would seek to depart from the bloc more quickly and skip the vote. Many hard-line Brexit advocates loathe the idea of participating in the election.
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The decision opens the door to a longer extension from E.U. leaders, who said that Britain could not continue to be a member of the European Union beyond May 22 if it did not hold the election. They feared that any law passed by the new European Parliament could be challenged if Britain were not represented in it.
European leaders will gather in Brussels on Wednesday to decide what to do about Britain. Any move must be taken with unanimity, and there have been splits about how strict to be. France in particular has been eager to usher the country out of the European Union as quickly as possible, whether or not London has approved a divorce deal. But other countries want a more flexible approach, and many E.U. diplomats who handle Brexit issues expect that leaders will offer a delay.
Tusk has proposed a year-long reprieve that could be ended early if British leaders settle on a divorce approach in the meantime, according to diplomats familiar with the discussions. The approach, deemed a “flextension” among policymakers with a penchant for acronyms and jargon, would significantly reduce the risk of a Brexit without a safety net. Economists say that a no-deal Brexit could unleash turmoil across Europe, particularly in Britain.
Some E.U. diplomats, sick of their bandwidth being consumed by Brexit, say they are unlikely to agree to a short extension of the type requested by May. More likely is a tough fare-thee-well and a departure on April 12, or Tusk’s longer-term proposal.
Tusk’s approach was endorsed Friday by one influential voice in Germany.
“E.U. has already ruled out 30 June,” Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee, wrote on Twitter. “Tusk’s offer of flextension would be a wise decision of [E.U. leaders], both insuring integrity of E.U. elections & leaving all options on table.”
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Still, for many Europeans, a longer extension is unappealing. They worry that it would take pressure off the British Parliament to agree on a deal. Many leaders also have concerns with Britain’s lingering in their club. They fear that British policymakers could turn obstructionist, since they would retain their power to shape E.U. policy on their way out the door.
British diplomats scoff at those anxieties, noting that they have abstained on many E.U. discussions since the June 2016 Brexit referendum and have not obstructed.
E.U. leaders worry that could change, particularly if May is deposed as prime minister and replaced by a harder-line Conservative.
One prominent Brexit advocate sought to stoke just such fears on Friday.
“If a long extension leaves us stuck in the EU we should be as difficult as possible. We could veto any increase in the budget, obstruct the putative EU army and block Mr Macron’s integrationist schemes,” tweeted Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg, an arch-Brexiteer.
Birnbaum reported from Brussels. Quentin Ariès in Brussels contributed to this report.
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