After months of negotiations, fraught phone calls and middle of the night flights to Brussels, British Prime Minister Theresa May received the news she wanted in a simple tweet Friday.
Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, wrote: "EU leaders agree to move on to the second phase of #Brexit talks. Congratulations PM @theresa_may."
As May headed home from Belgium on Thursday night, she would have been confident that her terrible year was about to end on a positive note.
EU leaders agree to second stage of Brexit talks
This would be some achievement after a 2017 in which she lost her government s majority in an election she didn t need to call and when Brexit talks seemed to be forever stuck at first base.
May had just been applauded by fellow European leaders at a dinner designed to back the deal on the first stage of the UK s withdrawal from the European Union.
The dinner was a prelude to the formal approval of the deal Friday by the remaining 27 EU countries -- agreeing on Britain s proposed financial settlement with the bloc, a tentative arrangement on the future of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the rights of European citizens living in the UK.
As May must know by now, however, a success one day can be overturned the next. Tusk s tweet gives the green light to the next stage -- but a lot could still happen in the final days of 2017.
However genuine Thursday evening s applause in Brussels might have been for the Prime Minister -- and it was "not very enthusiastic," according to Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern -- she is increasingly weak at home.
On Wednesday evening, lawmakers from her own side defeated May on a key vote on her government s Brexit legislation.
A second rebellion on a measure to enshrine in law the date of leaving the EU looms next week -- and there have been reports in the British media that May is considering backing down on this, rather than suffering a second defeat.
In the last six weeks, the Prime Minister has lost two Cabinet ministers, and an official investigation hangs over a third. These events are unrelated to Brexit but have nevertheless added to the sense of crisis in Downing Street.
For May, the deal approved Friday was hard-fought and hard-won. It almost fell apart earlier this month when Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland on whom May s Conservative government relies on for a working majority in the British Parliament, withdrew support for a draft that would have seen Northern Ireland be subject to different customs arrangements than the rest of the UK.
Frantic phone calls between the two women averted a disaster, and a new deal was struck a week ago.
After six months of wrangling over the first phase of negotiations, not helped by conflicting comments from May s Brexit minister, David Davis, getting this deal is a real achievement.
Yet this is only phase one: The more contentious issues will arise in the next one when Britain and the EU wrangle over post-Brexit trading arrangements.
Talks on how long the transition period -- designed to avoid a cliff edge for British businesses after Brexit happens -- could begin as early as next week, and then discussions over trade will likely start in March.
Yet not even May s Cabinet is in agreement on what a British-EU trade deal should look like, so the mood on both sides of the channel is far from jubilant.
As Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said Friday morning: "The second phase will be significantly harder than the first and the first was very difficult." Whether Brexit will happen "depends on the British Parliament and British people."
In a sign that EU leaders have finally reached the business end of Brexit negotiations, May held informal talks over apéritifs with key European power brokers -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron -- before the formal dinner began Thursday evening.
Merkel sounded a note of caution Friday morning, saying there was "much more work to be done and time is of the essence."
The year may end on a high for the Prime Minister, but there are plenty more hurdles for her to jump over in 2018. She knows it, her colleagues -- and opponents -- in the UK know it and crucially, so do her European counterparts.
