United Kingdom

The ink has yet to dry on Theresa May's Article 50 signature from last week which officially started the UK's 2-year long divorce from the EU, and already Europe has been traumatized by comments from former Conservative leader Michael Howard, who suggested that Theresa May is be prepared to go to war to protect Gibraltar as Margaret Thatcher once did for the Falklands, comments which according to the Guardian were "immediately criticized as inflammatory."

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

The true face of the EU is presently on display in Greece, not in Germany or Holland or France. Brussels must first fix what’s going wrong in Athens and the Aegean, and there’s a lot going wrong, before it can move on towards the future, indeed towards any future at all. It has a very tough job in Italy as well, which it’s trying hard to ignore.

Open Europe's Vincenzo Scarpetta gives his initial take on the first draft of the EU's guidelines for the upcoming Brexit negotiations.

European Council President Donald Tusk is a man of his word. He promised he would have a first draft of the Brexit negotiating guidelines for the 27 remaining EU member states ready within 48 hours from the moment the UK triggered the Article 50 exit mechanism – and he delivered. Overall, the document reads as anything but punitive. Below are my initial thoughts.

Yesterday the UK government triggered Article 50 and fired the starting gun on a two-year negotiation towards the UK's exit from the EU. These negotiations will be complex and contentious, and as Goldman writes this morning, the open question is whether they will prove constructive or adversarial.

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