UK Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to delay a vote in Parliament on the country’s Brexit deal with the European Union (EU), multiple media outlets are reporting. May and the EU had reached an agreement on the country’s withdrawal last month, but it still requires Parliamentary approval.
The New York Times reports that May is expected to make the announcement on Monday afternoon in an unscheduled address to Parliament. The vote had been originally scheduled for Tuesday.
According to the BBC, a spokesperson for the EU’s European Commission has said that the EU will not renegotiate the agreement.
“As President Juncker said, this deal is the best and only deal possible,” the spokesperson told the BBC. “We will not renegotiate – our position has therefore not changed and as far as we are concerned the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union on 29 March, 2019.”
The pound was down 0.5 percent against the dollar on the news, according to the BBC.
The expected vote delay comes as the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EU’s highest court, just delivered a ruling that the UK can unilaterally withdraw its Article 50 application to leave the EU, according to The Irish Times. The Luxembourg-based court delivered the expedited decision Monday morning, holding that the UK can unilaterally withdraw from Brexit so long as any agreement between the UK and the UK has not entered into force or, if no agreement has been concluded, as long as the two-year period from the UKs notification of its intention to withdraw.
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