Working in Brussels, I saw the dark side of the EU (2024)

To this day, many Remainers see the vote to leave the EU as an entirely self-inflicted wound. But is that truly the case? Senior European politicians are starting toreflect and acknowledge Europe’s own hand in Brexit –and the damage Brussels may have caused after the referendum result. During my time working in the European Parliament in the Brexit period, for two different Remain-leaning MEPs in the ECR and Renew Europe groups, I saw this darker side of Brussels first hand.

Friedrich Merz, leader of the German CDU, stated this week that he ‘remember[s] that David Cameron asked for changes to EU social policy and came back to London empty-handed. The continental Europeans were not entirely blameless when it comes to Brexit’.

Merz was referring to David Cameron’s attempts to secure reforms in Europe just before the referendum. Looking at those reforms now, they seem remarkably prescient.

Cameron asked for brakes on migration. Europe refused. Today, immigration is the most concerning issue for European voters, and anti-migration parties are predicted to deliver a crushing victory in next month’s European elections. Cameron asked to cut burdens on business. Europe delivered little. The European economy has since stagnated, and the economy of the United Statesis now growing at double the rate of Europe.

Cameron’s suggested reforms would have empowered both Britain and the EU, but punishing the Prime Minister became the order of the day in Brussels. In the end, Cameron returned to London humiliated and damaged, having promised much but returning with little. We all know what happened next.

Merz is right that Europe facilitated Brexit, but he should perhaps reflect as well on the way the EU behaved after Britain voted to leave. It was this behaviour, with European officials hell-bent on revenge and punishment, that facilitated and hastened Britain’s departure from the Union.

On one typically cold and grey day in Brussels in2019, I watched as British MEPs and staffers shuffled into a grey office in the European Parliament. Their host, an influential representative of Emmanuel Macron’sLa Republique En Marcheparty, did not stand up to greet them.

‘Get on with it’, he barked. He then reclined as the British delegation pleaded for his help in lobbying Paris to guarantee the rights of British citizens in the case of a no-deal Brexit.

The British delegation made a passionate argument about the need to protect people’s lives and wellbeing. But this was met with a callous, gallic shrug. ‘Well, what do you want us to do about it? Britain chose this, and so the British will deal with this.’

This attitude typified Brussels’s dealings with the UK.

Whenever meetings took place between the UK and the EU, there were endless leaks to the British press undermining the British negotiators or highlighting their perceived incompetence. The week before the UK general election, I was ordered by a press officer in theRenew Europe group, which includes the likes of Guy Verhofstadt as a member, to ‘secretly’ record Michel Barnier making comments on the Brexit deal. Unsurprisingly, our phones were not confiscated before the meeting as was normal protocol. This recording was in thenewspapershours later, and reached millions of people.

These were not the actions of a friendly, amicable partner seeking the best deal possible. These were the actions of an organisation seeking to undermine and humiliate.

Throughout the talks, Europe went out of its way to punish Britain. Some would argue that this was nothing more than pragmatism. Britain, after all, had chosen to leave, and this was simply the EU putting the EU first. But consider the treatment of Britons after Brexit, which did not affect EU citizens.

British permanent officials in the European Commission faced petty harassment after Brexit, with the Commission even refusing to reimburse their simple travel costs. This harassment would result in staff members taking the Commission to court, claiming discrimination.

Fixed length contract officials had no such recourse. Almost all were fired immediately, with only exceptions in a few cases.

In the European Parliament, British staffers working in the European Conservatives and Reformists group were marched into a room and sacked en masse. Only the most senior survived. In the liberal Renew Europe group, senior British staff were demoted and sidelined.

Only a last-ditch internal lobbying effort by the German Greens allowed departing staff to claim EU unemployment benefits. The desire for humiliation and revenge meant punishing the Britons who were theoretically most loyal to the Union.

For what it’s worth, I believe that the UK will one day rejoin the European Union. But a deep-rooted hostility to Britain still exists in certain corners of the Berlaymont. If Britain does attempt to rejoin, these will be the officials insisting with religious zeal that Britain must meet the ‘Copenhagen criteria’ – which would involve, amongst other things, the UK adopting the Euro.

Remainers and leavers alike must be under no illusions: it will take a generational change in the Berlaymont before we can repair the relations between Britain and the EU.