Hello, welcome to another MLEX podcast.

Today we're coming to you from Brussels.

My name's James Panicki.

I'm the managing editor of Mlex's Brussels Bureau.

And Brexit has been looming large this week, not just because the latest round of negotiations

kicked off in Brussels on Monday, not just because the latest round of negotiations kicked off in Brussels

on Monday, but also because of the echoes, or according to your point of view, the shockwaves

of a speech delivered in Florence last week by UK Prime Minister Theresa May.

And May wasn't in the cradle of the Renaissance to buy tourist knickknacks on the Pontevaccio, she wasn't there to

check out Botticelli's birth of Venus at the Uffizi. No Mae chose Florence as the backdrop

for a key speech on her vision for Brexit. But how did the speech go in the EU's corridors

of power? Also, since we last spoke, the leader of the free world,

Angela Merkel, was returned to power, albeit with a slightly tarnished electoral mandate.

How will that impact the Brexit process? Yes, I'm using impact as a transitive verb. My mother

would be horrified. Who better to put those questions to than the members of our Brexit

reporting team, Simon Taylor, who's based in Brussels and Matthew Hallhouse in

London under normal circumstances but with us for this week's talks. Now let's

start with May's speech and then talk about this week's negotiations. Matthew

the Florence speech was important because it fleshed out May's vision for a trade

agreement after Brexit. What does May's vision look like? So May has fleshed out a little bit

the vision of what she thinks a future relationship should look like. And it's basically a hybrid

that sits between what she describes as two extremes of Norway and Canada.

...