Brussels focuses on UK's €60bn exit bill before trade talks

Given the EU-27 want to leave this to the last stage of talks, Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, argues the timing for transition talks will be “particularly contentious”. “The UK will want interim arrangements to be fixed as soon as possible in the separation talks, to dissuade footloose companies from quitting the UK,” he wrote in a CER paper released on Monday. “But the EU may well exploit this British requirement by demanding concessions in other parts of the negotiation.”For the EU-27 “it would not make sense to talk of a transition without knowing the outlines of the future FTA,” he added. “Yet there will not be time to grapple with the [free-trade agreement], they say, until difficult Article 50 issues are sorted out.”