LONDON — How should we handle Brexit Britain? That was the question keeping some EU diplomats up on Tuesday night.

U.K. PM Keir Starmer wants to “reset” relations with the bloc and is keen to start talks as soon as possible. But before that can happen, EU countries need to agree their own joint negotiating position.

Ambassadors from the 27 countries were hoping to hash one out at a high-level meeting in Brussels on Tuesday — after falling flat during an earlier attempt on Friday.

But they remained deadlocked after a second day of talks and will now be coming back for more on Wednesday.

The big divide is over U.K. payments to EU budget funds: While all countries are in favor of the Brits chipping in, some want to take things slow.

The price of access

The most common position, held by a dozen member states including France, is that the U.K. should start making “imminent” or swift payments as the price of access to the single market, according to one EU official with knowledge of the discussions who was granted anonymity to speak freely.

Starmer wants the U.K. to rejoin the bloc’s internal electricity market and sign a separate deal granting single-market-like access in the agri-food sector — but that’s likely to come at a price.

That price, moreover, will be subject to negotiation. And countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium and Luxembourg have been pushing for a more cautious line.

They point out that the agreement struck at Starmer’s London Brexit summit in May didn’t explicitly include U.K. contributions to cohesion funds.

“We made an agreement in May — that should be the foundation for our conversation,” said a second person, an EU diplomat, also granted anonymity to speak freely about the talks.

“So we shouldn’t then in November come back and try to add to it the contributions to cohesion funds that we didn’t agree in May, even if that’s the principle that we feel is warranted … We have to take care of our relationship with the U.K.”

The diplomat summarized the divide: “Do you say to the Commission: You have to make the U.K. pay … or do you say, you know, we should explore whether it’s possible for the U.K. to pay.”

Pay to play

Cash payments to the EU budget are a touchy political subject in Westminster and were a key feature of the Brexit campaign — where the Leave campaign complained loudly about the amount of cash sent to Brussels.

While the U.K. is open to paying for access to EU programs, London says it wants value for money.

Previous negotiations over the U.K.’s rejoining the Horizon science research program dragged on amid U.K. bartering over the cost, and Starmer’s government this week pushed back on the EU’s opening offer of €6.75 billion for access to its SAFE rearmament program, Bloomberg reported.

The clock is ticking, however. The mandates under discussion in Brussels this week would cover the proposed agri-food agreement as well as linkage of the U.K. and EU emissions trading schemes.

London wants the former agreement operational by 2027 so British consumers begin to feel the benefits at the supermarket check-out before the next election. The latter is required to stop U.K. businesses from being hit by new EU border taxes next year.

So far, Starmer’s reset has had plenty of warm words. Converting those into legal texts was always going to be the hard part.