Britain could rejoin the European Union in as little as four years, according to Michel Barnier, the bloc’s former chief Brexit negotiator, who has suggested that negotiations over a return could be considerably shorter than the tortuous process that led to the UK’s departure.
Barnier said the “door is open” to Britain becoming a member again, arguing that a new agreement could be reached more rapidly because the two sides had not fundamentally diverged in several important areas since Brexit.
But any attempt to reverse the decision to leave would come with significant financial and political concessions. The £5bn annual rebate secured by Margaret Thatcher in 1984 would almost certainly be unavailable, while Britain would have to accept the EU’s principle of freedom of movement as part of membership.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Barnier described the original Brexit negotiations as “very complicated and very long, perhaps too long”, partly because leaving the bloc required Britain to withdraw from about 600 international agreements.
“I think it could be more rapid to rejoin or to open a new negotiation on one goal or another,” he said.
The UK voted to leave the EU in June 2016, but it was not until March 2017 that then prime minister Theresa May formally triggered Article 50, beginning the withdrawal process. Britain finally left the bloc on January 31, 2020, after years of political turmoil and negotiations over the terms of its departure.
Barnier said he hoped any future negotiations would be substantially quicker, pointing to the continued alignment between Britain and the EU in areas where Brexit had not produced major divergence.
“So I think, and I hope, in that case that the negotiation will be more rapid and more quick,” he said.
However, the prospect of regaining the financial arrangements negotiated by Thatcher appeared remote. Barnier said the rebate would be “off the table” because any return would represent “a new situation” rather than a restoration of the relationship that existed before Brexit.
“There will be the usual contribution of any member state to build to the European budget,” he added, ruling out a special fee simply for rejoining.
His comments also underlined the limits of any attempt by Britain to secure the benefits of membership while retaining the restrictions sought by Brexit supporters.
Barnier reiterated that there could be “no cherry picking” of the EU single market’s four freedoms: the movement of goods, people, services and capital. In particular, Britain would have to accept freedom of movement, a politically sensitive issue that remains central to the debate over closer relations with Brussels.
Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s former taoiseach, has similarly warned that Britain would be unlikely to secure the £5bn rebate again if it returned to the bloc.
The comments come as the UK government seeks to rebuild relations with European partners without committing to full membership.
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy acknowledged that closer economic ties would involve difficult compromises, arguing that the public should be involved in deciding how far Britain should go.
Asked whether a reported cap of 150,000 Europeans entering Britain under a proposed youth mobility scheme would be acceptable to voters in her Leave-supporting constituency of Wigan, she said negotiations would involve both European counterparts and the British public.
“There are costs as well as benefits to a closer relationship with the European Union,” she said. “There are trade-offs to be made, and we can’t cut people out of that conversation.”
Nandy also indicated that she did not personally favour going as far as rejoining the bloc, despite criticising the economic promises made during the Brexit campaign.
“The only thing that I think the British people are absolutely united on right now is that we left the European Union a decade ago with the promise of a close Brexit deal and the promise of benefits from that deal, and most of those have not been realised,” she said.
“It’s not working for people across this country, and we’ve got to do better.”
Barnier’s intervention offers a striking indication that the prospect of British membership is not dismissed in Brussels. But it also exposes the scale of the choices facing any government seeking to reverse Brexit: a return may be possible, but it would not mean returning on the terms Britain once enjoyed.
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