UK's May to miss EU 60th anniversary summit - report

British Prime Minister Theresa May will miss the EU's 60th anniversary summit in Rome next month as she sees no point in being involved in talks on the bloc's future, the Guardian reported, citing an unnamed diplomat.

“The door was open, but the response was, ‘We don’t think it is appropriate for us,’” the EU diplomat told the newspaper.
A second EU source said May’s decision was “entirely logical” because the main focus of the summit on March 25 would be the future.

“We are still a union of 28 and Theresa is of course very welcome to come and celebrate 60 years of the EU in Rome,” the source said. “Rome will be an opportunity to look back at what the EU has done, its achievements … but obviously the main focus is to look to the future.”

Britain voted in a referendum last June to leave the EU. May has declared she will trigger the two year process by the end of March.

The Guardian said Italian officials have warned May not to upstage the summit by invoking Article 50 – the formal trigger to start exit talks – close to the summit date.

It added that there was an expectation in Brussels that May would hand in the “divorce notice” at a summit on March 9 - 10. The UK government did not confirm the timing as the domestic parliamentary vote on Article 50 still has to clear the House of Lords.

Last week in the Commons, or lower house, MPs passed the Government’s European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill by 494 votes to 122. The Lords will begin debating the bill next week.

Earlier on Tuesday Brexit Secretary David Davis in Stockholm said it was unlikely that the early March date for a trigger was unlikely.

“The 9th or 10th is not a date I recognise in terms of our timetable. What we have said is by the end of March, sometime during March,” he told a news conference.