The Brexit secretary, David Davis, is seeking to drive a wedge between Germany and France, and the rest of the countries in the European Union, over the stalled negotiations to leave the bloc.

Speaking on Friday before an economic conference in Berlin, Davis suggested the two most powerful countries in Europe were blocking the UK’s hopes, backed by other EU states, to start trade negotiations. “Many of them do want to move on,” he told the BBC.

“They see it [progressing to trade negotiations] as very important to them. Countries like Denmark, Holland, Italy, Spain and Poland, can see there are big, big benefits in the future deal that we are talking about,” he said. “They have all got things to benefit from that. This is not a one-way street.”

Speaking a week after the EU’s chief negotiatior, Michel Barnier, set the UK a two-week deadline to commit to a higher financial settlement, Davis said the UK and these other countries were looking to Germany and France to compromise on whether sufficient progress had been made to allow the talks to move to the next phase.

“Germany and France are the most powerful players on the European continent,” he said. “So what they believe is very influential, sometimes decisively so. But it is a whole-of-Europe decision, it is a 27-country decision.

“Always in a negotiation you want the other side to compromise. I want them to compromise – surprise, surprise. Nothing comes for nothing in this world.

“But so far in this negotiation we’ve made quite a lot of compromises, on the citizens’ rights front we’ve made all the running … we have been actually offering some quite creative compromises.”



Asked whether the EU wanted see a commitment to a bigger divorce settlement, Davis said: “Of course they are saying that, but the other thing that is also clear is many of them do want to move on.”

He suggested the UK was willing to accept the jurisdiction of the European court of justice in the first phase of any transition deal.

“It will start under the regulations as they are now. Then ideally we’ll end up with a circumstance where we have another arbitration mechanism, but that’s for negotiation.”

Davis also signalled a willingness to drop a government amendment to the EU withdrawal bill which would set a date for exiting the EU on the face of the legislation. He said: “It is a good idea because it is stating something which is clear government policy: that we will leave on 29 March 2019.

“Now how it’s done, what the form of it is, is being debated in the House … The whole of this bill is going to be debated through the House, and there are parts of it which will change as we go through, undoubtedly.”

Meanwhile, the Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, has called on the UK to give Ireland “more clarity” on its proposals for the Irish border after Brexit.

“We all want to move on to phase two of the Brexit negotiations but we are not in a place right now that allows us to do that,” Coveney said at a briefing in Dublin with the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, on Friday.

“We also have very serious issues in phase one, particularly around the border and the Good Friday agreement and the peace process, that need more clarity than we currently have.”

Coveney suggested the final negotiations over Britain’s exit and its implications for Ireland could take up to five years to work out.



Coveney (L) and Johnson hold a joint press conference in Dublin. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images

Johnson, making his first visit to Ireland since becoming foreign secretary in July 2016, said no one in London or Dublin wanted to see a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit.

He said he recognised the “unique circumstances” of the border.

“We have to work together, and in order to resolve those issues and get it right for our people it is necessary now to move on to the second stage of negotiations which entail so many of those questions.”

His trip to Dublin comes as Theresa May holds talks with her Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, on the sidelines of an EU summit in Sweden.