Theresa May has told EU leaders 20billion euros is not her final offer on the UK’s Brexit divorce payment – and Whitehall sources expect her to double this amount.
Her concession comes as Brexit minister David Davis is preparing a presentation for the UK cabinet on a no deal walkout, which he will deliver next week.
The Prime Minister was under pressure to shift her stance after European Parliament president Antonio Tajani dismissed her initial offer as “peanuts”.
She was in Brussels yesterday for a summit with the other 27 EU leaders and is understood to have privately breathed new life into the flat-lining negotiations.
The 20billion offer made in Mrs May’s Florence speech was “not the final word”, she is understood to have told leaders in the private room.
Mrs May is also understood to have appealed to leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel to give the UK a deal “we can defend to our people”.
French President Emmanuel Macron later suggested the bill could be closer to 40billion.
Although the Prime Minister dodged questions about the cost of the divorce after the summit, she did not deny the final bill could be “many more billions” than set out in her Florence speech.
She said: “What we are doing as we look across the weeks coming up to the December Council is looking at a range of issues … On the financial issue, we will be going line by line through those commitments.
“I’m positive and optimistic about where we can get to in relation to the future partnership that we want with the EU, because it is not only in the interests of the British people, it is in the interests of people across the remaining 27 members of the EU as well.
“The full and final settlement will come as part of the final agreement that we are getting in relation to the future partnership and I think that’s absolutely right, I think that can only be done in that particular context.”
Mrs Merkel said a breakthrough at the next summit in December “depends to a large extent” on the UK, adding: “The topic of financial commitments is the dominating issue in that regard.”
Meanwhile, extreme Brexiteers used the impasse to demand the UK leaves with no deal.
Brexit minister David Davis is expected to set out plans for how that scenario could work to the UK cabinet on Tuesday.
But he also distanced himself from the extremists, saying the Government was preparing for no deal as an “insurance policy”.
