In the next few months, Britain and the EU will hold their first ever bilateral summit as part of Labour Premier Sir Keir starmer’s efforts to “reset”, post-Brexit relationships with Brussels.
Officials from the EU and Britain have confirmed the possibility of a summit, similar to the EU’s regular meetings with tertiary countries like India and China. This is part of the efforts being made to reset the bilateral relations.
Starmer continues his efforts to reestablish Britain as a global player on Thursday, when he hosts an event at Blenheim palace where he will host almost 50 European leaders. Blenheim is the birthplace for Winston Churchill.
One British official claimed that Starmer would have the opportunity to “speed-date” with several other leaders at the one-day European Political Community, which is a mix between EU member states as well as countries outside of Europe.
An EU official stated that Charles Michel, the president of the European Council and Starmer would likely discuss the idea on the sidelines during the meeting.
Both sides warned that the plan is still in its early stages. Starmer announced his intention to engage with Brussels institutions in his first days as premier.
Starmer spoke with Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission) shortly after he won his election on July 4, and Downing Street described the UK-EU relations as “unique”.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Minister for European Relations) met with Maros Sefcovic (Vice-President of the European Commission) on Monday. The UK government said that there had been many fruitful discussions. But this is still early.
Starmer wants to create a UK-EU defence pact that is wide-ranging and also to reduce tensions between the two countries in certain areas, such as agriculture.
Since the UK left the EU in 2020, the EU hasn’t held a formal summit. Instead, they work through the technical committees established under their bilateral trade agreement.
“If we are going to summits with Asean or the US, then it makes perfect sense that we also have a summit in the UK with our closest neighbour,” said a diplomat from the EU. Michel and the European Commission declined to comment.
Officials from the EU have stated that they won’t rule out anything in re-structuring the relationship between the bloc and the UK.
A senior EU official was asked if the EU could interact more with the UK in the future, including a summit between the two countries. He said that the EU has “a long list of agreements” with Britain, but “if there is the desire to go beyond, and have a strategic relationship, then we will look at what we can do and we aren’t excluding anything”.
The official continued: “What is important to us is the implementation of existing agreements.” These are our [red] line.
Klaus Welle said that Brussels would be happy to see an “honest effort” made to reset the relationship.
He said that there was no desire to “return to the situation at the time we were negotiating or to the situation of pick and choose’”, referring to a UK ambition to ‘cherry-pick’ certain parts EU policy for the post Brexit trading arrangements.
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