{"id":591281,"date":"2026-05-18T21:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T21:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/591281\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T21:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T21:27:08","slug":"no-tailor-made-deal-for-uk-if-it-wants-to-rejoin-bloc-say-former-eu-brexit-officials-european-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/591281\/","title":{"rendered":"No \u2018tailor-made\u2019 deal for UK if it wants to rejoin bloc, say former EU Brexit officials | European Union"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain would not be able to rejoin the EU on the special terms it enjoyed in the past, veterans of the Brexit<\/a> negotiations have said.<\/p>\n

According to former officials from around Europe<\/a>, the UK should not expect to achieve as beneficial a deal as it once had if it decided to begin negotiations on re-entry.<\/p>\n

The warnings came as senior Labour politicians jostling for the leadership of their party and country talk openly about wanting to return to the union at some point in the future.<\/p>\n

Georg Riekeles, a former adviser on the EU\u2019s Brexit taskforce, said he expected member states would take \u201ca very warm, welcoming\u201d stance but also a \u201chard-headed\u201d one to a British membership application.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a strategic need for the EU and the UK to work together, but I don\u2019t think there would be an appetite for opening up new decades of British exceptionalism,\u201d he said. \u201cThe price of re-entry would be membership on normal terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

During its 47 years of EU membership, the UK achieved an unprecedented special status:<\/a> opt-outs from core policies, such as the single currency and the Schengen passport-free zone, as well as a rebate on EU budget payments, while carving out an agenda-setting role.<\/p>\n

Sandro Gozi, Italy\u2019s Europe minister from 2014-18, said \u201ccertainly we will start\u201d with those standard terms, when asked about the euro and Schengen zone membership in any re-entry negotiations. \u201cIt is clear that the tailor-made suit is gone, and it is clear that the negotiation of the UK should tackle all the issues which are foreseen for any candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gozi, now an MEP and chair of the European parliament\u2019s delegation to the EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly, predicted EU member states would welcome a British application to rejoin despite the uncertainty of a possible Nigel Farage premiership.<\/p>\n

Wes Streeting argued over the weekend that the UK should rejoin the EU in the future. Even though the former health secretary\u2019s allies say this could not happen without an election or referendum to gain permission from British voters, his comments reignited long-dormant rifts over Europe at the top of the ruling Labour party.<\/p>\n

Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, who is seeking a return to Westminster to challenge the prime minister, has previously said he wants Britain to rejoin the bloc within his lifetime. However, on Monday he clarified that he would not try to make that happen if he became prime minister in the short term.<\/p>\n

Gozi said: \u201c[Brexit] has been a major disaster for the UK, but it has also been a loss for the EU \u2026 If in a moment of such a huge global turmoil, the UK decided to ask to rejoin the EU, I think that for our political model it would be a great victory.\u201d He stressed this was not a victory over the UK but about \u201cour attractiveness\u201d.<\/p>\n

Britain, he continued, had other options, such as \u201cbeing associated with the single market\u201d and being a founder of a new European security council, a proposed defence leadership body <\/a>that could involve up to a dozen members<\/a>, but has yet to be fully detailed. \u201cI think that the options are more than simply the full accession. But that would be very much up to the UK to make up their mind, to understand what they want,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Poland\u2019s anglophile foreign minister, Rados\u0142aw Sikorski, has also warned Britain not to expect a similar deal to its \u201cde-facto \u00e0 la carte membership\u201d of the past. British elites, he said earlier this month, needed to \u201cinternalise\u201d the fundamental European deal<\/a> \u201cthat you get more benefits in return for pooling of some aspects of sovereignty\u201d.<\/p>\n

An application from the UK \u2013 a former member that went through a bitter divorce \u2013 was also regarded as unlike any other.<\/p>\n

Riekeles, now an associate director at the European Policy Centre, said many in European capitals and Brussels were welcoming \u201cthe spirit and signals\u201d from the UK but stressed this was a long way from a formal process. \u201cThe EU would need to see a durable national consensus that the UK has really changed its mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on his own experience, he said: \u201cThe EU can work with a UK that knows what it wants. It struggles with a UK that wants the benefits of integration while keeping the politics of separation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world of Brexit is gone,\u201d he said alluding to Russian militarism, Chinese economic coercion and Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica first\u201d policy<\/a>. \u201cI think everybody with their full senses should see that the UK and the EU are part of the same strategic space. If this was the national consensus [for the UK to rejoin] \u2026 I think the EU would engage all in, very seriously. But are we there now? Not yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The European Commission\u2019s chief spokesperson, Paula Pinho, declined to comment on potential negotiating terms. Referring to an upcoming EU-UK summit, widely expected in early July, she said: \u201cThere are discussions on closer cooperation on a number of areas. That is where we are and that is also what we are doing, precisely in preparation of the next summit, rather than speculating about big, new or renewed issues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain would not be able to rejoin the EU on the special terms it enjoyed in the past,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-591281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}