EU states could veto Brexit deal threatening free movement

Four central European countries are prepared to veto any Brexit deal agreed between the UK and the European Union that restricts their citizens’ rights to live and work in Britain, the prime minister of Slovakia has said.

In a stark reminder of the challenge Britain faces at the negotiating table, Slovakia prime minister Robert Fico said Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – known as the Visegrad, or V4 group – would not hesitate to block any future trade accord that threatened the key EU principle of free movement of workers.

“The V4 countries will be uncompromising,” Fico said on Saturday in an interview with Reuters.

His comments come a day after EU leaders met informally in Bratislava, without Britain, to try to chart a roadmap for the bloc’s future after the shock of the Brexit vote. The UK’s decision to leave the European Union, though not formally discussed, overshadowed the Bratislava summit.

At an end of the summit on Friday, Mr Fico said that he and other Central European leaders whose citizens make up much of the EU migrant population in Britain would not let those people become “second class citizens”.

But in the interview on Saturday, Fico went further.

“Unless we feel a guarantee that these people [living and working in Britain] are equal, we will veto any agreement between the EU and Britain,” Fico told Reuters. “I think Britain knows this is an issue for us where there’s no room for compromise.”

London has not yet revealed what kind of trade agreement it wants with the European Union, but has said its priority is to control EU immigration while maximising opportunities for trade.

The European commission and parliament, in addition to the 27 remaining member states who must ratify a future Brexit trade deal, have repeatedly made clear that enhanced access to the single market will not be on offer unless Britain accepts free movement.

Brexit was not formally discussed at Friday’s meeting, but the commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker, reiterated the bloc’s stance at a press conference, saying he could not see “any possibility of compromising” on the question.

He said on Saturday that fierce Visegrad opposition to mandatory quotas for refugees had persuaded the EU to shift its approach to the migrant crisis. The bloc will now pursue a new principle of “flexible solidarity”, he said, although it is not yet clear what that might mean in practice.

The Czech ambassador to the UK, Libor Secka, pointed out this was not an "official statement" of the Visegrad countries' common position on their approach to Brexit negotiations.

He said that while he respected Mr Fico's opinion, it was for Poland - which holds the Visegrad presidency - to speak on behalf of the group.

All the EU leaders have insisted there will be no formal Brexit talks until Britain triggers the two-year divorce process and says what it wants.

European Council President Donald Tusk, said the British Prime Minister Theresa May had recently told him that might be in January or February 2017.