EU’s Kallas wants next week’s UK‑EU summit to kick‑start ‘small steps’ to rejoin
The UK has a shopping list of sectoral agreements it wants to come away with from next week's key and long-delayed EU-UK summit, part of the 'small steps' in a path that could eventually lead to membership.
EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas urged Brussels and London leaders to take “small steps” towards the UK rejoining the bloc on Thursday (12 November) in the latest sign of the new goodwill between the bloc and Britain.
Speaking with reporters in Dublin ahead of a meeting of the European Political Community, which brings together both EU leaders and those from outside the bloc, Kallas repeated that she would “very much like the United Kingdom to return to Europe” though she conceded “there are still certain traumas in the European Union regarding the UK’s departure from the bloc. Therefore, negotiations will not be that easy.”
UK prime minister Andy Burnham has made clear that he wants to secure a raft of sectoral agreements with the EU that will closely align London and Brussels on carbon emissions trading, energy, migration, agricultural produce and industry.
Burnham has hinted in recent weeks that his Labour party could promise a referendum on rejoining the EU in its next election manifesto.
And he told his ministers earlier this week that at the EU-UK summit next week he would “take opportunities that make people in this country better off. There is a significant prize.”
Burnham spoke at the COP31 climate summit in Turkey on Thursday morning before flying to Dublin for the EPC meeting where he announced that the UK had become the first country to sanction all 10 of Russia’s major oil producers and chaired a side-meeting on defence support for Ukraine.
Benjamin Fox is our trade and geopolitics editor. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He is based in Nairobi, Kenya, although he often reports from London.
