British PM slams EU for 'deliberately timed' threats

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON

The toughened Brexit approach and threats against the U.K. are deliberate acts to affect the June 8 election results, British Prime Minister Theresa May said Thursday.

“In the past few days, we have seen just how tough these talks are likely to be," May said at a Downing Street news conference following a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II after the parliament was dissolved due to next month's election.

“Britain’s negotiating position in Europe has been misrepresented in the continental press," May said, adding the European Commission’s negotiating stance had hardened.

“Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials. All of these acts have been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election that will take place on June 8,” May said.

May’s remarks came after an account of her dinner with European Council President Jean-Claude Juncker last week was leaked by a German newspaper. It also followed the remarks of Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier who ruled out earlier Wednesday a quick divorce.

According to the account, published by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Juncker told his host as he was leaving Downing Street that he was "10 times more skeptical than I was before” over the future of Brexit talks.

Underlining that the talks would be tough, May dismissed the report as “Brussels gossip”.

"During the Conservative Party leadership campaign, I was described by one of my colleagues as a bloody difficult woman. And I said at the time the next person to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker," she said later at a BBC interview.

May also accused some EU officials of wanting Brexit talks to fail without giving any names.

“The events of the last few days have shown that whatever our wishes and however reasonable the positions of Europe's other leaders, there are some in Brussels who do not want these talks to succeed, who do not want Britain to prosper," she said.

Last June, more than half of British voters (52 percent) opted to leave the union in a referendum pledged by former prime minister and then-Conservative Party leader David Cameron during the 2015 election campaign, ending the U.K.’s 46-year long membership with the 28-member bloc.

May government has since triggered Article 50, starting the official EU exit negotiations, and called for a snap general election scheduled for June 8.