When Theresa May arrives in Paris on Tuesday she’s unlikely to bring any surprises for French president Emmanuel Macron.
Macron will probably have already been briefed on the British leader’s latest thinking on Brexit after her meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel earlier in the day, European officials said.
With a summit looming on Wednesday that will go a long way to deciding the fate of Britain’s efforts to leave the European Union, Macron and Merkel are coordinating their moves every step of the way, the officials said, despite their contrasting messages in public. May is due to sit down with Merkel in Berlin at noon before she flies 550 miles for talks with Macron at 6pm.
In the Brexit saga, Macron has often played bad cop to Merkel’s good. It’s the French president who, despite the potential political impact back home, signalled he’s willing to see the UK depart without a deal to end the uncertainty hanging over the rest of the EU. The British Parliament’s failure to approve the Brexit deal struck with the EU in November, “puts us on the path to a hard exit,” Macron said last week.
Merkel, meanwhile, said she’d fight until the very end to stop a disorderly departure. “We want to do everything,” Merkel said in Ireland last week, “to ensure there is no disorderly UK exit – and we’ll expend a lot of strength to that end.”
While the differences in their positions are real, officials say, they’ve been coordinating closely behind the scenes throughout the process.
Back in June 2016 Merkel published the same message as François Hollande, Macron’s predecessor, on the day after the Brexit vote. The two leaders had also agreed common wording if the UK had voted to stay in, and that pattern has continued under Macron.
They may have superficial differences to reflect their different domestic audiences, but Paris and Berlin work to ensure they carry the same fundamental message, one European official said. May’s meetings with the two leaders on Tuesday will be prepared or reviewed by both Berlin and Paris, the official said.