This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Angela Merkel has said that securing EU leaders’ agreement on a Brexit delay up until the end of June will be “easy”, according to senior diplomatic sources.

Attitudes in some of the EU’s capitals towards a possible extension of article 50 have recently hardened, with diplomats complaining that London had been “lazy” and taken a positive decision for granted.

But the German chancellor let it be known at the recent EU-Arab summit in Sharm el-Sheikh that Berlin will not stand in the way, sources have disclosed to the Guardian.

Theresa May told the Commons on Tuesday night after losing by 149 votes, the fourth largest defeat ever on a government motion, that if MPs voted to reject a no-deal Brexit on Wednesday, she would bring forward a motion on Thursday asking whether MPs want to seek an extension to article 50.

She suggested such an extension would be short, but warned this risked a new cliff-edge in June, signalling the British government is looking at a three-month delay.

The EU’s heads of state and government will discuss their terms and conditions for an extension at an upcoming summit should the Commons call on the prime minister to make a request.

During talks in the Egyptian Red Sea resort last month, Merkel is understood to have insisted that an extension until the European elections on the 23 May would be “very easy”. A longer delay until 30 June, before the parliament convenes would be “easy”, she added.

A spokesman for the German government declined to comment.

Despite the confidence in Berlin at winning over the 27 heads of state and government, who would need to offer their unanimous support once a request is made, officials in Brussels fear Downing Street’s proposal for a delay could still tee up a potential disaster next week with a high risk that the leaders could react in unexpected ways.

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The heads of state and government have repeatedly taken a tougher line than expected towards the British government.

The outright rejection of May’s Chequers proposals at a summit last year in Salzburg was the most notable embarrassment for Downing Street.

Officials said that, rather than try to guide leaders’ decision at the summit, Brussels was currently preparing for them to have a free-wheeling debate. “The messier things are, the greater the chance things are escalated up to the leaders,” one EU source said.

EU officials said there was growing “frustration” at the prime minister’s reluctance to even prepare the way for an extension request.

In a letter the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker to Donald Tusk, his counterpart in the European council, said the UK’s withdrawal should be complete before the European elections on 23 May as British MEPs would otherwise need to be elected.

Officials representing Tusk informed ambassadors on Monday, however, that they believed an extension until July was still feasible as the European parliament would not have convened until that point.

Sources suggested that the European commission, as “guardian of the EU’s treaties”, was simply preparing the ground for a formal infringement notice on the UK should the government not organise elections, but that 23 May was not the outer limit of an extension.

A greater concern in Brussels is that the EU’s leaders might rule out any extension unless there is a clear reason beyond simply delaying an inevitable no-deal Brexit.

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EU sources said that pressure from business is still likely to push leaders towards granting an extension of a few months, but there was a particular concern in the EU’s capitals that by simply waiving it through Brussels could end up being blamed for a no-deal Brexit in the summer.

Senior EU officials have warned member states that a very short extension would be “useless” and “resolve nothing”, and be a burden on businesses rather than a help.

“The internal EU debate on extending Article 50 is definitely getting more complicated,”, said Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group. “There’s a growing sense that a short term extension won’t fix anything, and member states are becoming more anxious about being complicit in agreeing to something that simply makes no- deal more likely in June.”