EU leaders say no to British PM's attempt to change Brexit deal

Leaders across the European Union offered a united chorus of "no" on Wednesday to Britain's belated bid to negotiate changes to the Brexit divorce deal, with one official calling on British lawmakers to stop bickering and work out a cross-party approach.

In London, Prime Minister Theresa May acknowledged that her government hasn't decided exactly how it will try to change the deal to address British lawmakers' concerns about the Irish border — all this with Britain headed for the exit in less than two months, on March 29.

"We are, quite simply, running out of road," Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said.

Buoyed by winning a vote in Parliament, May has vowed to secure "legally binding changes" to the withdrawal agreement. British lawmakers voted Tuesday to send May back to Brussels seeking to replace an Irish border provision in the deal with "alternative arrangements," ignoring EU warnings that the agreement cannot be altered.

But EU leaders saw the House of Commons session in a very different light.

Jean-Claude Juncker, chief of the EU's executive arm, said Tuesday's vote "has increased the risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom," from the EU. 

"The withdrawal agreement will not be renegotiated," he said.

Other EU governments backed that stance, leaving little room for May to realistically secure any changes to the Brexit deal.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, "We've been down that track before and I don't believe that such alternative arrangements exist."

German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert said "opening up the withdrawal agreement is not on the agenda." 

Much of the opposition centres on a border measure known as the "backstop," a safeguard mechanism would keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU to remove the need for checks along the border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and EU member Republic of Ireland after Brexit.

The border area was a flashpoint during decades of conflict in Northern Ireland that cost 3,700 lives. The free flow of people and goods across the near-invisible border underpins both the local economy and Northern Ireland's peace process.

Many pro-Brexit British lawmakers fear the backstop will trap Britain in regulatory lockstep with the EU, and say they won't vote for May's deal unless it is removed.

May was speaking to Ireland's Varadkar and European Council President Donald Tusk on Wednesday, and met opposition Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn in an attempt to find elusive cross-party unity on Brexit.

May conceded that her government hadn't settled on a way to replace the backstop, telling lawmakers that "there are a number of proposals for how that could be done." She said measures under consideration included a unilateral exit mechanism from the backstop for Britain, a time limit to the backstop and "mutual recognition and trusted trader schemes."

'Eating biscuits and drinking tea'

The EU says the backstop is an insurance policy and as such can't have a time limit or a get-out clause.

Chief EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said, "Frankly, no one from either side is able to say precisely, in a clear way, what the nature of these alternative arrangements would be, whether they would be workable and effectively fulfil the aims of the backstop."

The EU parliament's point-man on Brexit, Guy Verhofstadt, underlined that nobody in Europe wants to use the backstop, but that it's "needed to be 100 per cent sure that there is no border between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic."

Verhofstadt said the only way for May to win concessions would be to back away from her long-held stance that Britain would not remain part of the EU's customs union after Brexit.

"If the future relationship is, for example, a customs union that makes it completely different," Verhofstadt told reporters.

Verhofstadt called for a cross-party approach in Britain, saying he hoped the meeting between the Conservative and Labour leaders will yield something more than "only eating biscuits and drinking tea." 

If they start working together, he said, "it could be the solution to this problem." 

Many businesses fear economic chaos will ensue if the U.K. isn't covered by existing EU trade agreements or a new agreement, leading to tariffs, customs checks and other barriers between the U.K. and the EU.

British lawmakers approved a motion Tuesday ruling out a "no-deal" Brexit but without saying how they expect that goal to be achieved. The vote was not legally binding, but has political force as an expression of the will of Parliament.

Juncker called on British lawmakers to make clear what they want.

"We know from yesterday's debate that the House of Commons is against many things," Juncker said. "It is against a no-deal Brexit, it is against a backstop.

"But we still don't know what exactly the House of Commons is for."