EU leaders agree to short-term Brexit delay, granting PM Theresa May a lifeline

European Union leaders on Thursday night agreed to a short-term Brexit extension in order to allow British Prime Minister Theresa May more time to get her withdrawal agreement through Parliament -- just a week before Britain was scheduled to leave the bloc.

Britain was due to leave the E.U. on March 29 without a deal after the withdrawal agreement May negotiated with E.U. leaders in 2018 was shot down for the second time by lawmakers last week -- hurling Britain into a full-blown political crisis and leaving May scrambling for a solution to implement the result of the 2016 referendum.

May’s government, as well as business leaders and pro-Remain politicians, have warned that leaving without a deal would cause chaos at ports, and lead to food and medicine shortages across the country. More pro-Brexit MPs have insisted that those alleged perils are overblown.

May is expected to put her deal again to Parliament next week, hoping that concessions that she has made to her Northern Irish coalition partner the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) will persuade them to back her deal and in turn convince the hardline Brexiteers in her own party to back her deal as a result.

To get more time to get lawmakers on her side, and to allow for the technical details of the deal through Parliament, she traveled to Brussels with a request of a delay until June 30.

The European Council, which consists of the leaders of the E.U.’s member states, had appeared skeptical of giving any delay without a firm plan, but on Thursday night announced they had agreed to a pause until May 22 -- although that is conditional on British lawmakers approving the deal next week.