Thread by @Usherwood

Since today's a good day for it, let's consider extending Art.50, but from the EU's perspective:

1/

A reminder that the EU27 have to unanimously approve any extension, as does the UK, so what they think matters on this

2/

Benefits of extending fall into 3 basic categories:
- legal
- political
- negotiational [sue me]

3/

Legally, EU avoids a big gap in certainty about what rules apply where and how

4/

Politically, they put onus back on UK to sort itself out and don't crash the bus of working towards a new relationship

5/

And for their negotiations, WA remains much the best way to secure Phase 1 items (finances, Irish dimension, citizens' rights), which they'd need to try and recover in no-deal

6/

Against that, same categories also apply for no giving an extension

7/

Legally, anything more than a short extension (which might be pointless) runs into trying to sort out #EP19 issue to be compliant with treaties

8/

Politically, it means more time w UK trying to work out what to do, probably with more annoying requests for renegotiation, distraction from rest of a packed agenda and generally the hassle of state only really focused on heading out the door

9/

Plus, since UK seems to be stuck on cherry-picking, maybe resetting to no-deal building-up-for-zero might help UK to appreciate its situation better

10/

In short, it's not a no-brainer either way.

Add to this that EUCO and EU27 don't appear to have discussed their preferences in any depth, plus evident differences in opinion and you have a situation where snap decisions aren't going to be easy

11/

In practical terms, that means unless UK submits a request today or tomorrow, EUCO next Thursday might well not be in position to say yes or no. That points to an emergency mtg following week, or maybe some written procedure

12/

That in turn means May will have to be very careful how she approaches EUCO, esp if extension has by then become a central plank of policy

I say this in light of Salzburg's car-crash

13/

In sum: another tricky call for everyone