EU, UK Unlikely To Reach Brexit Agreement In Coming Week - Spanish Foreign Minister

The United Kingdom and the European Union are unlikely to reach a Brexit agreement this week, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said on Monday.

MADRID (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th October, 2018) The United Kingdom and the European Union are unlikely to reach a Brexit agreement this week, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said on Monday.

On Wednesday, a two-day summit of the European Council, uniting leaders of the EU member states, will start in the Belgian capital of Brussels during which Brexit is set to be discussed, among other issues.

"Three or four days ago, we believed that agreement could be reached this week. Now it seems that it will not be possible this week. However, this week is not the deadline, we have half a month left. We continue talks. It's hard to imagine that we will not achieve an agreement," Borrell told reporters ahead of the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting, which is currently underway in Luxembourg.

On September 10, EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said that London and Brussels could finalize their agreements on Brexit in late October or the beginning of November.

Borrell said that there was no need to "overreact," as agreements were always reached "in the nick of time" in Europe.

The foreign minister also voiced his belief that London and Madrid were not facing any difficulties in reaching agreement on Gibraltar.

"I do not think that Gibraltar [issue] is a problem. This is a protocol to the draft agreement reached by the United Kingdom [and the European Union]," Borrell said.

He added that the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland was a more difficult one than the Gibraltar issue.

Gibraltar, a UK overseas territory located in the south of Spain, has been a source of tensions between the United Kingdom and Spain for over 300 years.

As the Brexit guidelines stipulate that once the United Kingdom leaves the union, no EU-UK agreement "may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom," London and Madrid have been engaged in talks on Gibraltar's post-Brexit status since the beginning of the year. On September 20, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that Spain hoped to reach an agreement with the United Kingdom on Gibraltar in October.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that the agreement could be reached, voicing his belief that the UK government considered it very important to reach the deal, as the failure to do so would prompt uncertainty posing risks to the UK economy and people.

"I hope that sensible approach will eventually win, and we will be able to reach agreement," Maas told reporters ahead of the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting, which is currently underway in Luxembourg.

Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl told reporters that the talks on Brexit were suspended until the European Council summit scheduled for Wednesday.

"On Wednesday, I hope that we can see it a bit more clearly," she said.

The United Kingdom will leave the European Union in March 2019. There is a number of thorny issues impeding the London-Brussels talks progress, namely, the Irish border and the customs arrangements.

European Council President Donald Tusk said on September 20 that if sufficient progress was reached at the October summit, an extraordinary summit for finalizing Brexit arrangements could be held on November 17-18.