Merkel’s Foreign Affairs Chiefs Revolt Against EU’s Hard Brexit Line – Reports

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Foreign policy chiefs of Germany’s ruling conservative alliance in parliament have criticized EU’s tough line on Brexit, Spiegel reported Friday.

"You cannot negotiate Brexit by constantly repeating EU dogmas," Norbert Roettingen, foreign committee chairman and senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, told Spiegel.

The lawmaker said that he regretted the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union – due on March 29, 2019 – but added that the remaining countries had to make Brexit work.

Johann Wadephul, deputy chair of the governing alliance’s parliamentary group in charge of foreign policy who also sits in the foreign affairs committee, stood by Roettingen. The official stressed in an interview to the online magazine that "the UN will not become some third country in the future," therefore "setting unrealistic conditions" was not in the state's best interest.

Berlin stands with the rest of the union in demanding that London recognize its core principle – the free movement of goods, finances, services, and people – if it wants to access its tariff-free single market.

After the German foreign policy chiefs' voiced regrets that the UK will leave the EU, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during a state visit to Berlin on Friday, asked Germany to stand by his country's bid to join the union.

"Our membership of the EU will be beneficial to Europe. Political hurdles should be removed… German support is important to us," he said at a press briefing after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Erdogan promised to take action soon toward a visa-free regime with the soon-to-be-27-nation bloc and called for a revision of their customs union.

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EU leaders rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s vision of UK’s future ties with the 27-member union last week at the EU summit in Salzburg, Austria, making a no-deal exit a possibility. If no agreement is reached, London and Brussels will have to negotiate a trade pact.

At the same time, Turkey has been in accession talks with the European Union since 2005 but negotiations grounded to a halt after the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey which triggered a massive crackdown on academics, media and activists.