Brexit is a "tragedy for Europe", but unified it: EU lawmaker
A senior member of the European parliament says Britain’s three-year struggle to leave the European Union was a “tragedy for Europe”, but has the effect of unifying other EU members.
Guy Verhofstadt, a liberal member of European parliament (MEP), said on Thursday that EU member states had come to know through since June 2016, when the Brexit process started, that leaving the European project would have huge consequences for them.
“Since Brexit in most countries people don’t want an exit of their country. Nobody wants any more a Nexit, the Dutch going out, or Frexit, the French going out,” Verhofstadt told a news conference in the Hungarian capital.
“What we see since Brexit is that the European idea is more popular than ever,” he added.
The comments come against the backdrop of claims in Britain and elsewhere that the EU has deliberately complicated the Brexit in order to make others believe that leaving the bloc would not be an easy task.
Pro-Brexit supporters in the UK have repeatedly accused the EU of trying to take an advantage of the divisive political situation in the country on the subject of leaving the EU by making the exit conditions extremely hard.
Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister who has been responsible for Brexit affairs in the EU parliament, said that Britain’s departure from the bloc after more than four decades would be a tragic experience.
“Brexit is in fact a tragedy for Europe ... When a big country like the UK is leaving the EU its difficult to say it’s fantastic,” he said.
The MEP claimed that the Thursday EU parliament elections in Britain would end with a victory for pro-EU parties despite the fact that the country might leave the bloc before the next European assembly convenes in early July.
“I’m quite confident that the outcome of these elections in Britain will see an enormous support for the pro-European parties,” said Verhofstadt, saying he saw “a lot of irony” in the fact that a country that wants to leave in the end has to organize European elections.
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