French President Emmanuel Macron is reluctant to let negotiations over Britain’s divorce from the European Union drag and is raising pressure on London to break an impasse, an Elysee Palace official said on Monday.
At a summit in Austria last week where European leaders tore up British Prime Minister Theresa May’s so-called Chequers plan, Macron said he expected Britain to put forward new proposals in October.
“It’s a way of raising pressure,” the official said. “It’s not necessarily ‘take it or leave it’, it’s really to say there’s a lot of work to be done by November, we must do it, and not let this thing drag on.”