From his days stoking anti-EU sentiment with exaggerated newspaper stories, to his populist campaign to pull Britain out of the bloc and withdraw from Britain. post-brexit trade deal He signed, the outgoing Prime Minister of Britain boris johnson Brussels has been a curse for so many years.
Such was his effect on breaking the ties between Britain and the European Union that Johnson was forced to announce on Thursday that he would step down, news that brought little public excitement in EU circles. Instead, there was only a stunned acknowledgment of the inevitable and resignation that things would never be the same.
“I will not miss him,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, highlighting an open disdain since he welcomed Donald Trump’s US election loss in 2020. And while trans-Atlantic relations grew rapidly since the arrival of President Joe. Biden, a new British leader, said politicians and experts did not expect anything similar.
David McAllister, a prominent EU lawmaker working with the United Kingdom, said: “Even with a new prime minister, I believe the current division has led to the British government on the main Brexit issues.” There will be some changes in the situation”.
Guy Verhofstadt, the EU’s top MP during the entire Brexit divorce proceedings, said Johnson’s influence was such that there is no chance another Conservative prime minister could run a radically different course.
“No one is under the illusion that Johnson’s departure from Downing Street solves any underlying problem in UK-EU relations,” Verhofstadt wrote in an opinion piece for The Guardian. “The damage done by the outgoing prime minister, through the project he played a vital role in securing power, survives.”
The United Kingdom has always been half a member of the European Union since joining the bloc in 1973. When Johnson joined the Brussels press corps nearly three decades ago, he often enthralled his domestic readers with stories that had two fundamental elements: He put the European Union in the dark. lights, and they had little to do with reality.
As a conservative politician, he threw his weight in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s EU membership behind the arguments for leaving the bloc. Johnson used his flashy manner and witty mannerisms to sell the benefits of leaving the European Union, sometimes disregarding facts. He was instrumental in the victory of the Brexit campaign in the cliff-edge 2016 Brexit referendum vote.
Yet the disdain never deepened earlier this year when he turned to a unilateral rewriting of the deal he signed with the post-Brexit 27-nation bloc. The agreement established a special system in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, so trade with the Republic of Ireland _ an EU member _ could go on without establishing a physical border.
“I was face-to-face with him. Line for line, comma for comma, and he doesn’t want to respect it,” the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier reminded Friday, still baffling on Johnson’s strategy. Used to be.
Michael Emerson of the Center for Europeans said, “A reputational loss has been done to a country and society that has long been proud of its deep culture of ‘My Word is My Bond’, even a leave an international treaty, even without a written contract.” Policy Studies.
A bill to unilaterally break the deal on trade in Northern Ireland is still in the House of Commons, and there remains some hope that London may back off the brink.
“They have this law in Parliament, so they are taking steps in that direction. But they have not crossed the line,” said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, which presides over the European Union and is more widely known in English as the Czech Republic.
Yet a quick look at potential contenders doesn’t inspire hope for any fundamental change as it includes many of the conservatives who have spent years basking in Johnson’s confrontational Brexit strategies.
“If you look at the potential successors, there is no one who will basically break through the Brexit line,” said Rem Koorteweg of the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, Netherlands. “The Conservative Party has a major Brexit core that you have to persuade to become prime minister.”
While the first years of Brexit have yielded anything but promise Johnson promised, any potential quest to return Britain to the EU is as good as the main opposition Labor Party now focused on making Brexit the best it can be. Is. position instead.
Not that even the European Union would like to welcome the country with open arms.
With Ukraine, with inflation-induced economic issues and migration problems, “their plate is full,” Korteweg said. “They are not really looking forward to talks with the British, who will seek exceptions and exemptions anyway,” he said.
Barnier, who led the European Union in Brexit negotiations for years, does not see that happening.
“It’s not the issue at hand,” Barnier said on Sud radio. “Very frankly, what we need is a state of mind where the British government respects the treaties that have been negotiated.”
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