French finance minister warns of 'irrevocable' Brexit impact

French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Thursday that he would welcome the UK rejoining the European Union, but warned Brexit had "irrevocable" consequences.

"I was... very sad when the UK decided to leave and I’d be very happy if they came back," he said in a speech to students at the London School of Economics.

However, he rejected the idea that the UK could rejoin the EU on its own special terms.

A return to the EU would mean "you take the whole thing," including regulation, particularly those governing the financial sector, he said.

He said the City of London, the capital’s financial district, was a "great beneficiary of the EU" but that, since Brexit, it had been overtaken by other financial centres such as Paris, Frankfurt and Dublin.

"There’s been irrevocable consequences... that are going to be very hard to just go back to as if nothing had happened," he said.

The French minister is due to attend a meeting with his EU counterparts in Luxembourg on Friday, where they are expected to give the go-ahead for European supervision of certain major stock exchanges on the continent.

Euronext, the stock market operator which brings together the exchanges in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and Milan, will likely be supervised at the EU level, he said.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham last month said that rejoining the EU was among the potential answers to the unavoidable question of what Britain’s future relationship with Europe could look like.

"Welcome back," Emmanuel Macron said in reaction to Burnham’s comments.

European Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said it was for London to chart a way forward.

Many in Brussels are cautious about whether the UK would accept less favourable terms as part of a return to the bloc.

An EU, UK summit is set to be held before the end of the year.