26 June, 2017
"Today we agreed on dates, we agreed on organisation and we agreed on priorities for the negotiation", Barnier said.
Before lunching on Belgian asparagus, red mullet and meringue cake, the two exchanged gifts that homed in on a shared love of hiking: Davis received a walking stick from Barnier's native Savoy Alps and Barnier a first edition of a French mountaineer's Himalayan memoir - "Regards vers Annapurna".
The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier said: "We are talking about orderly withdrawal first and that makes sense".
Those issues are the exit bill; the rights of three million European Union nationals living in Britain and the one million Britons on the continent who now are allowed to live, work and claim welfare benefits; and the status of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
But the point was effectively conceded before talks began, with Mr Davis yesterday accepting an European Union timetable set out last week, which makes clear trade will only be discussed once "sufficient progress" is made on citizenship, Northern Ireland and a "single financial settlement" of as much as £88 billion.
The move backfired, May lost her Conservative majority in the vote and has been fending off critics of her leadership ever since.
"So we have got a very sensitive political context, a very clear objective which is to preserve all the dimensions of the Good Friday Agreement and we have an bad lot of work to do - bilaterally, and also in coordination with the Dublin government on my side, so that we come up with imaginative and concrete solutions along the lines I have described, particularly taking into account the single market".
But Mr Barnier warned: 'The United Kingdom is going to leave the European Union, single market and the customs union, not the other way around.
"I think the whole process will lead to a happy resolution which can be done with honour and profit to both sides", Johnson said as he went into a separate meeting of EU Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg.
These facts are signs that she might face pressure to a secure a soft Brexit deal as opposed to her original plan of a hard Brexit which would have meant she would have more control over immigration and law-making.
He told reporters: "A fair deal is possible and far better than no deal".
Davis said the timetable for the talks was "ambitious but eminently achievable".
Among the countries surveyed, Italian and German citizens felt the strongest about the European Union maintaining its core principles during the discussions, 68% of those in Italy and 67% of those in Germany said that there should be no compromise. Some 3.5 million European Union nationals live in the United Kingdom compared to 1.2 million Britons spread around the continent.
Barnier said there will be one week of negotiations every month and the two sides will use the time in between to work out proposals.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted Thursday that the EU's future take priority over Brexit talks as Prime Minister Theresa May met European leaders for the first time since a disastrous election gamble.
At a news conference after Monday's talks, Davis quoted Winston Churchill: "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. I am certainly a determined optimist".
