The prime minister and the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, will then meet before the end of the month to take stock of the talks.



May is under intense pressure to find a new path forward after MPs voted in favour of the Brady amendment last month, which rejected the terms of the current backstop, and went to Brussels this week seeking a legally binding alternative. This, the UK says, could include a unilateral exit mechanism, the introduction of a clause to time-limit the backstop, or ways to replace the backstop with as yet undefined “alternative arrangements” that avoid a hard border between the Republic of Ireland Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The backstop is an insurance policy in the withdrawal agreement negotiated by the UK and the EU that guarantees that there can be no hard border under all circumstances.

EU leaders have remained adamant that the withdrawal agreement cannot be reopened. “We will not gamble with peace; or put a sell-by date on reconciliation. And this is why we insist on the backstop,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, told reporters on Wednesday after meeting Ireland’s Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar.

MPs have reacted angrily to the EU’s unwillingness to contemplate a change in their long-held position. The diplomatic note seen by BuzzFeed News notes that the backstop is not only a bilateral UK-Irish issue, but a European one, as the Irish border will become the external border of the EU and the single market after Brexit.

Some MPs have suggested that not even a legally-binding time-limit would win their support. They want to see the backstop binned all together.

However, the feeling in Brussels is that London’s problems go beyond the backstop. “There is scepticism that even if something different were on the table, London would have the necessary capacity and reliability to negotiate with the EU,” the note says. “To this, there is the additional fact that May has not put forward any concrete idea in regards to the so-called ‘alternative arrangements’.”