The European Union has threatened to sever its security links with the United Kingdom and reject its attempts to forge a deep and lasting alliance after Brexit unless London concedes to remain under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, according to UK press reports.
Britain remaining a party to the Court of Human Rights would, in Brussels' view, shore up the legal status of the several million EU nationals currently resident in the United Kingdom.
The reported threat has come just days after David Lidington, the Minister for the Cabinet Office reiterated to the national broadcaster that his country was seeking to form as close a security relationship with the continent as possible once it is has left the economic and political bloc.
One of the possibilities reportedly being explored is the formation of a joint UK-EU military intervention force in which Britain would command its own forces separately from its European counterparts.