French President Emmanuel Macron has responded to UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s comments on rejoining the EU with a brief ‘welcome back’.
MADRID: French President Emmanuel Macron reacted Wednesday to UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham floating the idea of Britain rejoining the European Union by saying in English: “Welcome back.”
“If the British want to come back and if the prime minister is moving in that direction, I think that is very good news both for his country and for Europeans,” Macron added in French at a news conference in Madrid.
“Come back,” he added, standing alongside Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
Burnham, prime minister since July after Labour MPs turfed out Keir Starmer, said in an interview broadcast earlier on Wednesday that rejoining the EU was among the potential answers to the unavoidable question of what Britain’s future relationship with Europe could look like.
His comments came after he told his ruling Labour Party’s annual conference that he would set out “different options” for future ties with the European Union closer to a planned summit with the bloc later this year.
Macron said the British had “always been useful in helping us simplify things” when the UK was part of the EU and were “demanding partners”.
“Andy Burnham is right to have this boldness,” he added.
The French president also pointed to the limits of the UK seeking closer ties with the EU while remaining outside the bloc, a decade after the Brexit vote.
“You cannot choose between the freedoms of the union and decide to take what suits us and not the rest,” he said.
Sanchez took a similar position, calling Brexit “a huge loss, both for the British population and for the whole European project”.
If the UK were to seek to rejoin the bloc “then of course Spain would applaud it and open its arms again to a brotherly people”, he added.
