Why Europe has differences over Brexit

PRIME Minister Theresa May meets in London on Tuesday with her Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy amid a frenzied week of Brexit diplomacy for the UK premier. The visit of Mr Rajoy, who has set up a Brexit task force in London to help the more than 130,000 Spanish nationals living in the country, will underline how each EU state has distinctive political, economic and social interests that inform its stance on the UK's exit.

While Brussels depicts the EU-27 as unified, positions of the countries vary according to factors such as trade ties and patterns of migration with the UK, domestic election pressures, and levels of Eurosceptical support within their populations. The divergent, and complex positions of EU states thus range from the UK's fellow non-eurozone member, Sweden, whose political and economic interests are likely to be broadly aligned with UK positions, to countries that have more complicated postures, including France.

Spain, the eurozone's fourth largest economy, benefits, economically, from around 300,000 UK citizens residing in the country, and has a significant trade deficit with the United Kingdom which - other things being equal - favours softer negotiating positions on Brexit. Yet, this picture is complicated by other factors, including Gibraltar's future.