including the capital, bucharest. they are protesting at a government decree that will decriminalise some types of corruption and release dozens of officials from jail. the new american defence secretary has said the us will deliver an effective and overwhelming response if north korea uses nuclear weapons. on a tour of south korea and japan, to reassure asian allies, generaljames mattis said any attack on the us or its allies would be defeated. white house officials are saying they have had a productive meeting with australia's ambassador to the us. the president had a stormy phone call earlier with prime minister malcolm turnbull. mr trump is unhappy with a deal, struck by the obama administration, to take people from australian refugee camps. you are watching bbc news. time now for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. just how ugly is britain's divorce from the eu going to be,

and how damaging for the unhappy couple? as british mps debate the formal triggering of the exit process, my guest is an eu politician who'll be at the heart of the complex negotiations over a brexit deal. belgium's former prime minister and current mep guy verhofstadt has warned britain to expect no favours as it heads for the exit, but how confrontational is he prepared to be? guy verhofstadt, welcome to hardtalk.

yep. i want to talk about brexit with you but i don't want to start with the detail, i want to start with the context. when the british public voted for brexit onjune 23, 2016 barack obama was president of the united states. now the white house is occupied by donald trump. to what extent do you think this fundamental shift in global politics, the most important power in the world, after all, how important is that as a changed context for brexit? i think it gives an opportunity from the european side to show and to work on more unity, because let's be honest, what trump has said since now in a few days and weeks is very hostile towards europe. he's saying openly that he thinks that europe could disintegrate further. he thinks more european members of the eu will follow britain out of the door and he thinks

that is a good thing. he thinks it is a good thing to have a disintegrated european union, while i think it is quite the opposite. in fact the interest of the americans isn't in a disintegrated union. the interest in america is to have a very united european ally. and you can only walk on two legs. trump needs an american leg and he needs also a european leg. whatever your sceptical view of donald trump as president and as an individual, the fact is the european union needs to be closely allied with the united states of america, that is one of the pillars of european security policy. exactly, and that is what he is putting in danger. with respect, you are too. some of the things you have said in recent days are actually extraordinary. you have said, you said this yesterday, i am quoting you, "under the enormous political influence of trump's political adviser, stephen bannon, he sent people to berlin, to paris to prepare the ground for similar referendum as that seen in britain."

yes, exactly. well, what evidence do you... you've essentially said he is taking active steps to undermine the european union. stephen bannon launched breitbart also in europe. everyone knows that is an extreme right—wing news site he is promoting. in fact, extreme right—wing radical views. yes, but that's not the trump administration. you're saying these hostile things about donald trump as president which seem to me to have no evidence at all. i am a little puzzled that you are saying it's not the trump administration when mr bannon has been appointed as member of the national security council of the us. even putting outside... you cited something that is happening at breitbart, a news website. i think it is maybe not the trump administration, but mr stephen bannon, the special adviser of donald trump. we can discuss about what the influence is on mr bannon on mr trump, what i see is what mr trump is saying. crosstalk.

his quotes are very clear. so i yours. i hope to be clear. that is why i am in politics. normally you have the politics of politicians maybe here who are trying to escape the question. i, in my statements, try never to escape the question. yes, lets think about your choice of words. it makes it boring, maybe. it makes it fascinating. your choice of words. my view, you say, is we have a third front that is now undermining the eu and that third front is now donald trump. exactly. it is a word i am coming back to, hostility. you are downright hostile to what... i am not saying i am not hostile. i am only seeing and i am only hearing what mr trump is saying. you are using the language of warfare. 0k, let me explain maybe. i think we have first of all the threat to europe by radical islam, jihadists, secondly, i think, we have a threat by putin, an autocrat in the kremlin

who tries to divide europe, already years from now, and now we have an american president who is not longer seeing the american unity, the european unity as a pillar for his foreign policy. and he is saying openly he hopes for a disintegration of the european union. so i think we are very much alone. i think that we are for the moment in an existential moment for the european union and i hope that my response to this is that only european unity can be the answer. i am mindful you havejust written this book... that is my book about it. europe's last chance: why the european states, its subtitle, why the european states must form a european union. ironically, you've taken a phrase from the american constitution. yes, exactly. i think it's gonna be difficult right now to persuade europeans that they should regard as a model

the federal united states of america, but that's obviously... it's about donald trump now. you're making it as trump is the same as the american institutions. what i have seen is america after the financial crisis was capable to react immediately to the financial crisis. the cleaning up of the banks, they did an investment programme, they did quantitative easing. well, if i look to europe, we are not a union, in fact. what we are is in fact a loose confederation of nationstates still based on unanimity rule, and we are always acting too little too late, for example, in the financial crisis, in migration... so this book i have to tell you is even more eurosceptic than all the eurosceptic books that have been published in the united kingdom in the last... you think the formulation of the eu simply doesn't work. it cannot survive. you made an interesting point about the importance of nationstates. what donald trump is, avowedly a self—confessed american nationalists, "america first" is his message and that message, which is a nationalists message, is echoed across europe in different nationstates where politicians are winning with a nationalist message. it is not echoed.

it is the opposite. it was first born in europe. nationalism has been born in europe. nationalism has not been born outside europe. more than that, i think it is a tricky thing which is happening. that is that an american president is bidding on more nationalism in europe. you know what nationalism in europe means? that's not nationalism based on values, it's nationalism in europe based on ethnicity. and what nationalism has done in the last 100 years in europe, we all know it! 20 million victims, all of this is based on nationalism. so an american president thinking, "0h, european unity is not necessary, let's go back to national identity, ideas of nationalism." that is playing with fire in europe! this is not america!

this is europe! we have the holocaust, we had the pogroms. well, you can... i think it is a fair argument. you can cite the events of the 1930s and ‘aos at me but let's stick with what happened today. yes, but it can come back. let's look at the context for brexit. i come back to the basic point about the situation today in europe. you have just seem theresa may in the white house with donald trump talking about the state fast alliance between britain and europe. you've heard donald trump saying that he is going to seek a very quick trade deal with britain. talking in the most positive terms about britain post brexit. it weakens your hand as an eu negotiator, does it not, that britain is now looking at this very close relationship with donald trump? i am not reasoning in those terms because i know that the interest of the uk is more in europe than in the us. you know the figures, you know the figures. 44% of the exports of britain goes to the continent, to europe. 0nly12% goes to the us.

so whatever free trade agreement is made between the us and the uk, the main interest of the british industry, the british companies, british workers, british citizens sits in europe. it is in europe. and so these negotiations will be very important. and i am very open about it. i think that fairness is the basic principle we need to apply in these negotiations. so when theresa may says, alongside donald trump, that, as you, she said to donald, "as you renew your nation, we renew ours, the opportunity is here to renew the special relationship, the post—eu britain and trump's america will lead again," your response is? my response was yesterday in the street of london, i think, i have seen thousands and thousands of people not agree with this. i don't agree in the rhetorical or in the narrative of trump. i think it is devastating.

also for the american economy, because protectionism, that is also part of his narrative. how you can make an agreement between the uk, which is an open society who believes in trade, i think, and on the other hand an american president who is seeing every trade deficit with whatever country as an existential threat. and there is a trade deficit from the us towards the uk. so, good luck with it. i think that is more interesting for the uk authorities to work together on a fair partnership with the european union because that is the biggest market for the british industry. and i want to tease out what you mean by a fair partnership in a moment but before we get to the detail of the negotiations which you will be involved in, just one more specific point which i think arises out of what we're seeing in the united states and what we've heard from theresa may and that is a question

about security. we will get to economics. but security, you know as well as i do that britain has been a linchpin of europeans of security, our armed forces are superior to most in europe, our intelligence services are superior to most in europe, if you talk to people in germany, poland, the baltic republics, they all say we need a close security relationship with britain come what may, whether brexit happens or not. that is also my point. i think that we have to discuss not only the economic partnership between the uk and european union. it will be necessary, besides that also, to talk about internal and external security. what i don't want, it is not my position... it is leverage to the uk. ina minute. it is what i want to say. i don't want a trade—off between the economic discussion we will do and on the other hand the question of internal and external security. i don't think it is serious to make a trade off between... germany has already indicated... yes, but let's be honest, the important thing to do

on the security issue from the european side is to create a european defence union as fast as possible. you know the figures. but if you don't have britain it would devalue the whole thing. you know the figures, 42% we spend on military, and we are only capable to do 10%— 12% of the operations of the american army. i am no mathematician. i am a lawyer. i know it means, these figures, we are three or four times less effective. and why are we less effective? we don't have a european defence community. we delegate everything 28 times between the 28 member states. i think this whole discussion, also on security, internal and externally, is a good chance to create finally what we needed to already do decades ago, that's to create a european defence union. right, well... that's also in the book. yes. let's get to the nitty—gritty of negotiating a complex deal with the uk on its departure from the european union. just some very quickfire practical questions. you said recently that you thought

getting a trade deal within the two years timeframe was impossible. you stick to that? i think that is impossible, yeah. everybody knows it's impossible. they don't think it is impossible in london. if you speak with the ministers responsible, they think it is entirely possible. no, no, no, no. all the people that i am talking with know that very well. what we're going to do in this 14—15 months, it is not two years, it is 14—15 months, because at the end of the process, before the end of 2018, we need to start a consent procedure in the european parliament, because it is the european parliament who has to give the green light for the final agreement. so we are going to start at the end of may, beginning ofjune, that gives us a timeframe of 1a or 15 months. what can you do in this 1a or 15 months, realistically? i think the withdrawal agreement is the first thing to do. not an easy thing, i can tell you. to put it in common parlance that is the divorce agreement. before the relationship

it is the divorce. then you have to define the new relationship in general terms. but do you do them in tandem? because there is a big debate about whether the sets of negotiations, one about the divorce arrangements and one about the new relationship. take the treaty, the treaty, article 50, is very clear. it says, first of all, start with your withdrawal agreement in the light of the framework of the future relationship. so you need to have an idea, not more than that, about your future relationship and then you can conclude your withdrawal agreement. to continue then... for example, if it is an fta, a free trade agreement, it will take years. how many years in your opinion...? i think the whole period of transition and the period of transition will be two years? three years? besides the two years, we have the 1a or 15 months i'm talking about, you will need the whole transition period to conclude what will be the final agreement with the uk. that's a realistic timeframe. there are cracks appearing, it seems to me, in the eu position on some of the key fundamental

positions of a negotiating deal. you've said the four freedoms that underpin the single market, they're not going to ever be negotiated on and there will be no cherry picking. others have sent signals suggesting there can be sector by sector deals which, while britain leaves the single market, will allow britain preferential access to certain sectors of that single market. is that possible? there will be no cherry picking, nobody of the three institutions of the eu will accept that. mrs may has indicated she wants to go out of the union, out the single market, out the customs union, out the european court ofjustice and then say, "that is a new programme that interests me and that is a sector that interests me".

that will not happen. sorry, because then she has to take the obligations and the payments linked to these advantages. you can never create a status outside the european union which is more advantageous than to be member of the european union. it would not be fair towards the members of the european union and to our taxpayers. you want to believe there can be no cherry picking but others have sent a different message. even mr barnier, who is, with all due respect, more important to the negotiations than you because he is negotiating on behalf... he is negotiating and we have to approve his negotiations. exactly. you're an observer and he's a negotiator. according to a leak the guardian got hold of, he told meps that there needed to be a special relationship between big finance and the city of london. that has been denied two times by mr barnier. in the nature of politics he had to deny it because it was an unauthorised leak. sorry, i was in that meeting and he never said it. it was a meeting of the conference of committee chairs of the european parliament.

i was present as the brexit negotiator for the european parliament and he never said that. be assured of one thing, cherry picking, we shall not allow. so when the german car industry, for example, pleads with the german government and says, be real, i'm quoting the head of the federation of german industry, "imposing trade barriers and protectionist measures between the eu and britain, or the two political centres, the eu on one hand, the uk on the other, would be a very foolish thing to do." that's a german speaking. i agree with all this, i'm against protectionism myself, but that's not the point. it's not a point about protectionism. the point is, if, for example... i think that is still the best option, the uk should ask for... to be part of the single market, to continue to be part of the single market, at the same time accepting the four freedoms of the european union. the problem doesn't start with the european union, the problem starts with the uk government saying, "0h, the freedom of movement of people inside the european union, we don't like it because there are polish people coming to work

on our construction sites here in london, we don't like it." i think that these people are very necessary in the uk economy. you know what the labour mobility in europe is? 196. you know what the labour mobility in the us is? 10%. ten times bigger. one of the reasons we have 2 million vacancies in britain and europe is because we don't have enough labour mobility. isn't the truth, mr verhofstadt, that you take the position you take, no cherry picking, no negotiating on these sector deals, you take that position because you're deeply insecure. you worry that if britain is seen to get a deal that works for britain, that actually makes the british economy successful that it will encourage others in europe to follow britain to the exit door. you're deeply insecure about the fragility and vulnerability of the european union. the problem of the future of the european union is not so much linked to brexit negotiations. the problem of the future

of the european union is linked to the courage and willingness of the european leaders for the moment to go forward, like i describe in this book, with the unity and integration of the european union. creating a defence community, creating an economic governance for the single currency, creating an external border and coastguard. so the future of the european union is depending on that. not so much on i think on a fair partnership with the uk. you've been writing books about the need for a federal europe for a long time. you wrote united states of europe in 2006. as prime minister. you wrote another book in 2009 called how europe can save the world, emerging from crisis. you have written these books, which now look like museum pieces, europe has moved on. it's no more about union and federation. it's the opposite that is happening, you are laughing a bit at my books but at the same time i was the one who said we need a banking union before we can overcome the financial crisis. in the meanwhile you agree that the banking union

is now in place. how europe can save the world was your title in 2009. frankly europe has done nothing to save the world in the last seven years. we didn't have the institutions on a european level that were necessary. i already explained to you, we are still a loose confederation of nation states based on the unanimity rule where we act always too little too late. i have described the financial crisis in the book as a typical example of that. and i said we need a banking union and today we have a banking union. you laughed at me as prime minister when i proposed a number of initiatives for the defence union. today these initiatives, european headquarters for example, are on the table. when you talk like this, mr verhofstadt, you play into the hands of people like nigel farage, one of the most imprtant leaders of the leave campaign in the uk, who says you are a dangerous fanatic and he says you have long been anti—british to the core.

that is complete nonsense. you know i'm racing with an old car, it is a 1954 right—hand drive aston martin, how can you be more british than that? i'll tell you, look at your own words, i wonder about your attitude to britain. you said in 2016, according to politico, the website, "politically the uk is already on its way to becoming an adversary rather than a trusted partner of the eu". certainly that is what mr farage is exactly standing for. these are your words. when i am attacking him, i am attacking not britain, i am attacking somebody who wants to destroy the european union. the uk is is on its way to becoming an adversary. is that the way you feel about the uk? absolutely not, what i'm feeling about is we can find a fair partnership. but people like mr farage, at the heart of the brexit campaign and looking to destroy the european union, that's our problem and that is what i will fight against. the thing is, it's not really just about britain. when you said of the brexit

campaign, you described it as the latest high mass of tribalism in europe. it isn'tjust actually in britain where people are expressing great scepticism about the european union, great scepticism about immigration and its effect upon europe. you could look at le pen in france and wilders in the netherlands. look at poland, look at hungary, so many nations across the european union. i don't deny this. i'm fighting against these people. i don't deny le pen exists. i don't deny wilders exists. but i can tell you one thing, the public opinion in our countries on the continent in the eu is not against europe, they are against this european union. that's exactly why i'm saying to you this book is maybe more eurosceptic than all other books that have been published because i think this european union will not survive. what you need to do to convince people who are voting today voting for le pen is offering them a vision for the future,

showing them unity for europe can tackle the financial crisis, the economic fallout of it, the migration flows, refugees coming to europe. security externally. you have been peddling the federalist dream for ten years. at what point do you realise it's a dream and not a reality? the banking union today is a reality because we have pushed for it. i also think tomorrow the european defence union will be a reality because the world is changing and we cannot count on mr trump. so it will arrive. i see, for example, what is happening in france, the french presidency, macron, you're following it, what he is saying about europe, a frenchman saying we don't find sovereignty anymore on a national level, we need it on a european level. let's say a frenchman was saying that, you need to invite him on as soon as possible. we'll get you back to discuss the state of brexit in a few months or years‘ time.

but right now we have to end there. guy verhofstadt, thank you for being on hardtalk. good morning. more wild and windy weather to come for some of you. different areas to where we saw yesterday. yesterday, it was western parts. these are captured on the northern ireland coast by one of our weather watchers. that is the low pressure responsible, that is pushing its way towards iceland. and we turn our attention to this in the bay of biscay, which is going to have an impact across southern areas, and already as we start friday you see some rain across devon and cornwall. most others stay dry. a little bit chillier than recent mornings. quite breezy across western scotland, but most light winds to begin with. rain quickly spreads into south—west england and wales through the morning, into the midlands and the south—east

of england through lunchtime, and then for the afternoon in the northern portion of the irish sea, some heavy bursts of rain around. and north—west england. there will be some dry moments as well. some of the driest weather throughout will be in the northern half of scotland. sunshine here throughout the day, and a fine day for much of northern ireland. to the east of antrim and across durham we could see rain spread in through the afternoon, and still some rain around across parts of north—west england, the midlands, the south—east. some in the east of england may stay dry throughout the day, and the rain on and off towards the south—west and wales, but consistent in the afternoon around cardigan bay, and it is across the english channel where the strongest of the winds will be. now, not as strong as they were through yesterday across the far south—west. 50 mph gusts possible here, but strengthening somewhat through the latter stage of the afternoon and evening, english channel. channel islands, 70 mph possible, that will cause some disruption. towards the south—east corner we will see a0 and 50 mph gusts to end the evening. the strong winds quickly ease as that area of low pressure pushes its way northwards into saturday morning.

chilly start for england and wales, lots of dry and bright weather sandwiched between one area of low pressure across northern france, another one to northern scotland. here, after a cloudy and fresh start, some of the showers will be wintry over the hills. some rain potentially in the south—east corner of england. keep a close eye on that one. that might just be a bit further east. most will have a fine end to saturday. a chilly night will follow, an area of low pressure pushing into the north sea, a few showers spreading in across the english channel once again. so for sunday, probably one of the wettest spots will be here, and maybe to the north—east of scotland. but most will have another fine day, and a chilly one, with temperatures around five or six degrees for the most part. following that will be a cold night, with a frost developing across many rural parts of the country, and a bright but chilly start to monday. but, before the day is through, there is yet more wet and windy weather spreading in from the west of the atlantic. bye for now. hello. you're watching bbc news. i'm james menendez.

our top story this hour: pressure grows on russia, as the fighting in ukraine escalates sharply. america's new ambassador to the un blames moscow for the violence in eastern ukraine, and says sanctions will remain in place. welcome to the programme. our other main stories this hour: a third night of protests in romania. thousands gather to demonstrate against government plans to change corruption laws. migrants, trump, brexit, just some of the topics set to dominate the first eu summit of the year taking place in malta. i'm aaron heslehurst. the business news. brexit, round one.