May's appeal for 'parallel' Brexit talks dealt a blow by MEPs
Theresa May's appeal to hold Brexit divorce and trade talks in parallel has been dealt a blow by MEPs in Strasbourg.
MEPs have voted in favour of a tough line on Brexit negotiations following a debate.
The European Commission's president Jean-Claude Juncker and chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier restated their rejection of parallel trade and divorce talks.
They insisted the EU could not deal with its future relations with the UK until the terms of withdrawal were "fully resolved".
They also said Britain would have to pay a divorce bill to settle financial commitments entered into as a member state, with Mr Barnier saying: "We do not seek to punish the United Kingdom, we are simply asking the United Kingdom to deliver on its commitments and undertakings as a member of the European Union."
MEPs backed by a margin of 560-133 a resolution tabled by the leaders of the main party groupings, which set out red lines for the upcoming withdrawal negotiations under Article 50 of the EU treaties.
The parliament - which has an effective veto on the deal reached after two years of negotiations - insisted Britain must meet all its financial obligations and rejected any "cherry-picking" of privileged access to the single market for sectors of the UK economy such as financial services.
The resolution backed the commission's "phased" approach to dealing with the terms of withdrawal before moving on to the question of trade, and warned that there can be no trade-off between security and the future economic relationship between the EU and UK.
The leader of the EPP group of centre-right MEPs, Germany's Manfred Weber, said Britain had to accept that the EU would take a "tough negotiating position".
The UK could not simply pick and choose areas such as security, scientific collaboration and free trade where it wanted to co-operate with the remaining 27 member states, he said.
"I feel London thinks it will find the perfect deal and will take the positive points and leave the negative points," said Mr Weber. "This will not happen. Cherry-picking will not happen.
"A state outside the EU cannot have the same or better conditions than a state inside the EU."
And the parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt predicted Britain would eventually change its mind on Brexit.
"There will be, one day or another, a young man or woman who will try again, who will lead Britain again into the European family once again, and a young generation that will see Brexit for what it really is - a cat-fight in the Conservative Party that got out of hand, a loss of time, a waste of energy and a stupidity," said the former Belgian prime minister.