BRUSSELS: German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted on Thursday that the EU’s future take priority over Brexit talks as Prime Minister Theresa May met European leaders for the first time since a disastrous election gamble.

Under intense pressure on all sides since losing her parliamentary majority, May said her task at the Brussels summit would be to set out her plans to protect EU citizens’ post-Brexit rights.

But Merkel, Europe’s most powerful leader, made clear that this was not at the top of her agenda as she reaffirmed Berlin’s strong ties with France and its newly elected President Emmanuel Macron.

“For me the shaping of the future of the 27 is a priority coming before the issue of the negotiations with Britain on the exit,” Merkel said, referring to the number of EU nations minus Britain. “We want to conduct these negotiations in a good spirit but the clear focus has to be on the future of the 27.”

Macron, attending his first summit, did not mention Brexit directly but said it was now time to get down to concrete work — “hand-in-hand with Germany” — on putting the European Union back on track after years of austerity and crisis. “We have to establish our own strategy based on our own interests,” Macron said.

May is set to brief EU leaders on her Brexit plans over dinner on Thursday, before being kicked out while the remaining 27 discuss key issues including the future location of the EU’s medicines and banking agencies, currently based in Britain.

For her part, May said she would set out “clearly how the UK proposes to protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK and see the rights of UK citizens living in Europe protected”.

The fate of an estimated three million Europeans living in Britain and around one million Britons living elsewhere in the EU was thrown into doubt by Britain’s vote to leave the bloc last year. “That’s been an important issue, we’ve wanted it to be one of the early issues that was considered in the negotiations, that is now the case, that work is starting,” May told reporters as she arrived.

May had previously refused to guarantee the rights of EU citizens in Britain until those of expatriate Britons were secured.

The issue of citizens’ rights is one of three priorities in the Brexit talks which began on Monday, along with Britain’s estimated 100 billion euro divorce bill, and the fraught question of Northern Ireland, which will be on Britain’s only land border with the EU after Brexit.

‘Imagine’

Earlier, EU president Donald Tusk had channelled John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ as he said he hoped Brexit could be reversed — though others immediately poured cold water on the idea. “Who knows? You may say I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one,” the former Polish premier added with a broad smile, quoting Lennon’s iconic song.

But Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel — who has strongly argued for EU unity on Brexit — said Tusk should let it be. “I am not a dreamer and I am not the only one,” Michel told reporters, saying he thought it was “British humour” by Tusk.

Tusk insisted meanwhile that the remaining 27 members had a renewed sense of optimism about the bloc’s future after years of crisis and mounting anti-EU sentiment, which culminated in the Brexit vote. “Never before have I had such a strong belief that things are going in a better direction,” he said.

Law to combat online terror

In Brussels, security has been stepped up after Tuesday’s failed bomb attack at one of the city’s main rail stations by an IS sympathiser, following strikes in Britain and France.

Tusk said leaders were all deeply concerned by the issue and agreed that if social media companies could not help prevent online radicalisation and hate-crime, then they were ready to introduce legislation to make them do so.

Leaders also endorsed the EU’s growing efforts to build up defence capabilities, especially amid concerns about US President Donald Trump’s commitment to transatlantic ties.

Meanwhile Macron and Merkel are expected to recommend another six-month rollover of tough economic sanctions imp­osed against Russia in 2014 over the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has claimed 10,000 lives.

Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2017