Before his first meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, American President Joe Biden increased the pressure on the British government to find a swift solution to the post-Brexit conflict.
As it became known on Thursday, the ambassador of the American embassy in London, Yael Lempert, had already found clear words to the British negotiator David Frost last week and spoke of Washington's "great concerns" about the situation in Northern Ireland.
The post-Brexit arrangements have captured the president's attention, she is said to have said.
He wanted a "negotiated solution", even if this meant "unpopular compromises".
Jochen Buchsteiner
Political correspondent in London.
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According to an internal government memo quoted by the Times, Lempert let Frost know that the UK's refusal to control goods on the border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain is increasing tensions in Ireland and Europe. Apparently the intervention is said to have been given emphasis in the form of a demarche.
With the flower, Lempert also threatened London with obstacles to free trade talks.
According to the Times, she said the Brexit issue will not negatively affect the desired free trade agreement, provided London agrees to follow the EU's agricultural product standards.
This is rejected in London.
Boris Johnson will endeavor to prevent America's apparently clear partisanship on behalf of the European Union on the issue of goods controls from overshadowing the G7 summit in Cornwall, which begins this Friday.
"Multilateralism is back"
He wants to use the meeting of the heads of state and government to launch an international vaccination campaign and to show the unity of democratic countries against authoritarian states. His bilateral conversation with Biden on Thursday will serve to prepare a new “Atlantic Charter”, with which cooperation is to be intensified. Prior to the meeting, Johnson said: “While Roosevelt and Churchill faced the question of how to help the world recover from the devastating war, we face a very different, but no less intimidating, challenge - how to strengthen ourselves the corona pandemic. "
On Wednesday evening, a conversation between David Frost and EU negotiator Maros Sefcovic ended without result. Frost again refused to rule out unilateral steps to ensure the free movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Sefcovic said the European Union's patience is very thin. Should London unilaterally extend exemptions for goods controls that expire at the end of June, Brussels would consider suspending parts of the exit agreement and imposing tariffs on British exports.
The federal government said on Thursday that the issues of the Brexit process were not part of the Scherpa deliberations for the G7 summit. The topic is "discussed more bilaterally" and does not appear in the final declaration. The “message” that Chancellor Angela Merkel is hoping for from the G7 summit has been summed up in the sentence: “Multilateralism is back”. Biden's commitment to stronger international cooperation was welcomed in Berlin, and the mood in the preparatory talks was "very, very good". The G7 is now again a “community of values” whose democratic societies are making an “attractive offer” to the rest of the world. A "long, substantial final declaration" is expected in Cornwall.