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President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker has today stressed the need to settle the past and present before looking beyond to the future as the UK and the Union continue another round of talks this week.

Juncker has warned that any negotiations about future UK-EU trading relationships can only hold after the divorce issues are completely resolved.

"I would like to be clear that I did read with the requisite attention all the papers produced by the British government and none of those is satisfactory, so there are an enormous amount of issues that need to be settled," Juncker said in a speech to EU ambassadors.

"We need to be crystal clear that we will commence no negotiations on the new economic and trade relationship between the UK and the EU before all these questions are resolved... that is the divorce between the EU and the UK. We cannot mix these issues up," he continued.

"First of all we settle the past before we look forward to the future."