President Nikos Christodoulides has said that if the United Kingdom is “ready” to return to the European Union, “we are ready to welcome them”, with the UK now appearing to begin to plot a course of closer relations with Europe.
“If Britain is ready to come back, we are ready to welcome them,” he told British television channel Sky News, which asked a host of leaders of EU member states their opinion on the prospect as they arrived in Brussels for this week’s European Council summit.
The European leaders’ responses were largely positive, with Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kullbergs saying that “I think Britain should come back to the family”, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez saying, “I applaud it, we are better united”.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda also offered positive responses, while the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that “all our friends are welcome to join” the bloc.
Meanwhile, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis answered the question of the UK’s rejoining with a quip of “yes, of course, we need more money”.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa said that “the UK leaving was one of the biggest catastrophes for the EU in the entire time of its existence”, and on this front, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said that he would “of course” welcome the country back into the bloc, but that “this time, the UK must learn its lesson”.
Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten stressed that “in the end, it’s up to the British people to decide what that relationship looks like”.
Burnham said country could ‘go all the way’ and rejoin EU
Conversations about the UK potentially rejoining the EU, almost seven years since it left the bloc, have come about after the country’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office in July, suggested that the country could “go all the way” and rejoin the EU in the coming years.
“We could stay as we are. We could look at what George Osborne has said about a customs union, we could look at what the Liberal Democrats have said about the single market, or we could go all the way. There are clearly options that need to be considered. We have to look at what is doable and what would be the pros and cons of each,” he told the BBC last month.
Previously, he had told British newspaper the Guardian that “I am going to say I want to rejoin” the EU, and that “I hope, in my lifetime, I see this country rejoining the European Union”.
Since 2016, when Theresa May became British prime minister following a referendum in which 52 per cent of the British electorate voted to leave the EU, successive British governments have stuck to “red lines” she set out, with those being that the UK remain outside the single market and customs union and do not allow the freedom of movement of people.
Until Burnham’s accession to the office in July, all four of May’s predecessors – Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer – adhered to those red lines.