Fears that US trade talks could prompt EU calls for investigation, as French candidate says UK is becoming ‘vassal state’

Senior European politicians have suggested Theresa May’s meeting with Donald Trump on Friday could sour negotiations over Britain’s departure from the European Union.

Speaking before the prime minister and new president’s meeting in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon, the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron claimed that Britain could become subservient to the US.

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“Britain lived in an equilibrium with Europe,” Macron told France Culture radio. “But now it is becoming a vassal state, meaning it is becoming the junior partner of the United States.”

Macron added that he now feared the EU could no longer rank the US as a reliable partner in safeguarding western values. “What’s happening today with Trump’s first statements and choices is extremely serious and worrying,” he said. “It’s firstly a choice that it will be an America that provokes ... an America that destabilises things that have been built for decades.

“It signifies that the US will no longer be in a position to co-organise globalisation and be the world’s policeman with the European Union. The unpredictable choices, the outbursts and the inward-looking United States of Trump no longer guarantees Europe’s security.”

Meanwhile the European commission’s Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, is understood to have privately expressed concern at the potential for the prime minister’s visit to the Oval Office to further damage relations with EU member states.



Any evidence that Britain had started negotiating a deal would be likely to prompt calls for the European commission to investigate, in a move likely to harden attitudes on both sides of the coming article 50 negotiations.

A European commission spokesman declined to comment on Barnier’s private views. He repeated the organisation’s official position that the UK is not legally permitted to negotiate on the detail of future trade deals while still under treaty obligations with the EU.

One senior source in the commission said: “Like everyone else, we will all be watching.”

May’s visit follows a series of contacts between London and Washington since Trump won the election in November. Her two closest advisers, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, met members of the new president’s team in December and the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, visited Washington this month to discuss a potential bilateral trade deal.



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On Thursday, Trump said: “I’m meeting with [May] tomorrow. I don’t have my commerce secretary. They want to talk trade, so I’ll have to handle it myself. Which is OK.”

However, asked before a meeting of EU member state finance ministers in Brussels whether May intended to open negotiations with Trump on a trade deal, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, insisted the UK would abide by its obligations to wait until it withdrew from the EU.

He said: “Britain remains a fully engaged member of the European Union. I am here today for discussions with my finance minister colleagues.

“We will continue to take a full part and we will continue to abide by the rules, the regulations and the laws of the European Union for so long as we are members. So of course we want to strengthen our trade ties with the very many trade partners we have around the world, but we are very mindful of our obligations under the treaty and we will follow them precisely.”