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Swedish PM warns of 'precarious situation' as EU votes through Brexit deal

The Local Sweden
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Swedish PM warns of 'precarious situation' as EU votes through Brexit deal
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven talks to Swedish reporters before going in to vote. Photo: Peter Wallberg/TT

Sweden’s Prime Minister has warned of an “extremely precarious situation” for the European Union if the British parliament votes down the Brexit deal the 27 remaining member states backed in a historic vote on Sunday morning.

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“Let’s wait and see what the House of Commons decides, but if the agreement doesn’t go through then we’re in an extremely precarious situation,” Löfven told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper on the way into the special meeting of the European Council. 
 
“I can’t see actually that any more major negotiations are possible.” 
 
The leaders of the 27 remaining member state approved the Brexit deal shortly after 10am on Sunday morning, in a special meeting. 
 
“EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations," European Council President Donald Tusk wrote on Twitter. 
 
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker described the UK’s coming departure as “a tragedy”. 
 
"To see a country like Great Britain ... leave the EU is not a moment of joy nor of celebration, it's a sad moment and it's a tragedy," he said.
 
Michel Barnier, the former French foreign minister who led the negotiations on the European Union side, insisted he had always “negotiated with the UK, never against” it. 
 
"We will remain allies, partners and friends,” he added. 
 
Löfven said that were the deal to be rejected in the UK parliament, the European Union’s 27 remaining members were agreed that there should be “some form of extension of the process”. 
 
 
Dagens Nyheter’s EU correspondent Pia Gripenberg predicted that the Houses of Commons would block the deal. 
 
“It isn’t going to [go through], at least not if all the MPs and parties who have said they are going to vote against it fulfil their pledges,” she said in an article in Dagens Nyheter
 
But she said it was probably too early to write off Prime Minister Theresa May. 
 
“But Theresa May has shown herself able to slash her way forward and sneak through the most insidious of the shallows which have risen up since the Brits had their EU referendum.”  
 

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