Tomorrow in Brussels, Sir Tim Barrow, the UK's representative there, will hand deliver a letter to European Council President Donald Tusk. It will declare that Brexit has begun and it will open a two year negotiation window over the terms of the withdrawal. The letter could also set the tone for what could be rather contentious talks in January. May warn the EU that quote no deal for Britain is better
than a bad deal. Whether us to discuss what we should be looking for tomorrow and in the coming months is Katherine Bernhard, Professor at the University of Cambridge School of Law. Katherine, thank you for joining us um tell us what we know about what this letter will say, and perhaps more importantly, what what don't we know yet? Well, actually we don't know a great deal, with the content of the letters being kept secret, but it's thought likely
to contain more than the simple words we're off. It's thought likely to contain some of the UK's negotiating position, what it would like to get out of the negotiations with the European Union. But that's pretty much all we
do know. But what we from the Article fifty itself is Tomorrow will be the day that Article fifty gets triggered, and that starts the clock ticking, and the clock will run down till the end of the two year period, which will take us toy of March nineteen, and the UK will be out of the European Union on the twenty March. Katherine, there is only a draft of the e USE negotiating guidelines. When will that be finalized? And as the UK have any say in that? No, the
UK won't have any say. It's for the European Council, which is the heads of state of the other twenty seven member states. It's likely that the guidelines guidelines will be available quite soon. Um, they've already, as you say, being drafted. And what happens next is that these guidelines
will be discussed by the seven. There's going to be a summit in June where the UK and the EU will meet to negotiate how to negotiate, and then the substantive negotiations themselves won't start until the end of September seventeen, So in fact there's going to be a rather quiet period um, at least publicly them no doubt, will be discussions going on behind the scenes, but there'll be a quiet period because the USE made it clear that no
negotiations will occur until after the French elections, and the French elections are end of April. Startup, May, Catherine, What don't we think or what do you think that Theresa May is going to be pushing for in particular when these talks began, Well, there are two separate issues. One is the question of the divorce, which is covered by Article fifty, and then the second issue is the future deal between the UK and the EU. Now, Theresa May
and her government want the two issues to be negotiated simultaneously. However, the EU says they should be done sequentially, and the law tends to favor the EUS position because strictly speaking, any future deal that the UK entered into cannot be negotiated until it's a third country. A third country is EU jargon for not being a member state of the EU.
And of course, if there was goodwill on both sides, it would be perfect perfectly possible for a degree of simultane its simultaneity either two being negotiated at the same time. But the moment the EU is holding hard and saying divorce first, then future deal does the EU have the stronger hand here, Yes, because the EU knows that once Article fifty has been triggered, the clock will start running down and therefore the power very much shifts to the EU.
That if the EU doesn't cooperate and takes things that have very leisurely paced, eventually there will be a rush up until the end of the two year period to get some sort of deal. And in anticipation of this, Theresa May has said that no deal is better than a bad deal, and that's because she doesn't want to be essentially having a metaphorical gun held off against her head come March, being forced to sign a deal which
is not in the UK's interest. But the way Article fifty structure is very much puts the boot on the EU's foot. Kather, we only have about thirty seconds, but maybe you can tell ask what will the euse priorities be in these stocks money money number one? And sorting out the rights of EU citizens in the UK and
British citizens in the EU number two. Okay, I want to thank our guest Katherine Barner, and she's a professor at the University of Cambridge School of Law, filling us in on the latest developments on Brexit and explaining to
us what might be coming next. It sounds like we are going to be quite fixated on Brexit and the negotiation process over the next couple of years, because when Theresa May's representative delivers that letter tomorrow, that will trigger a two year window for negotiations with the EU on exactly how it's gonna look when Britain exits the EU. Okay, coming up on Bloomberg law, the Attorney General says he's
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