France urges more EU-U.K. talks, warns on Boris Johnson’s bill

France said the European Union should keep pursuing a free-trade agreement the U.K. while warning that any British violation of the Brexit agreement would end the push.

Clement Beaune, France’s junior minister for European affairs, said U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to break international law by rewriting the accord on the country’s withdrawal from the EU would end up harming Britain.

“Overall, we should continue to negotiate,” Beaune told reporters on Monday in Brussels. “I can’t imagine the U.K. degrading its international signature.”

Johnson has provoked an outcry in the U.K. and across the 27-nation EU with a bill that would allow ministers to renege on the divorce treaty Britain signed with the EU. Earlier on Monday, former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May criticized the bill and said she would refuse to support it in Parliament.