WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?
Brussels’ arrogant Brexit chief vows to ‘educate’ the British and ‘teach them what it means to leave the EU’
BRUSSELS Brexit chief Michel Barnier yesterday threatened to teach Britain a lesson for leaving the EU, as the row over demands for a £90billion divorce payment boiled over.
In an incendiary intervention, Mr Barnier said he wanted to use Brexit to ‘teach the British people and others what leaving the EU means’.
Tory MPs branded the EU’s chief negotiator ‘patronising and arrogant’ – and said his comments showed Brussels was starting to panic about the loss of Britain’s financial contributions to the EU.
The former French cabinet minister denied that he was trying to ‘blackmail’ the UK, but vowed to ‘educate’ British voters about the price they would pay for daring to leave the EU.
‘There are extremely serious consequences of leaving the single market and it hasn’t been explained to the British people,’ he told a conference in Italy. ‘We intend to teach people… what leaving the single market means.’
Mr Barnier’s comments were made at a gathering of the EU elite at a sumptuous Renaissance villa on the shores of Lake Como. His speech to the annual Ambrosetti forum does not appear to have been designed for public consumption.
The event takes place behind closed doors. But parts of it were publicised by a BBC reporter who was attending.
Former Tory Cabinet minister John Redwood said Mr Barnier’s comments were a mark of ‘desperation’, adding that there was no need for the UK to hand over a penny after we leave in March 2019.
‘We don’t owe them anything other than our national contributions until we leave,’ he said. ‘This seems to be finally dawning on them and they are getting desperate.’
Fellow Tory Peter Bone said: ‘If there is one thing the British people don’t like it is being lectured by foreigners. It is patronising and arrogant, but this is what the EU elite do. They think that the British people have made a silly mistake and need to be informed how wrong they are. It is complete contempt for democracy.’
Mr Barnier’s comments emerged hours after Brexit Secretary David Davis flatly denied reports that Theresa May has agreed to pay Brussels up to £46billion as part of the exit negotiations, describing the claim as ‘nonsense’.
The European Commission has tabled proposals that could see the UK pay up to £90billion as it leaves the EU, but British officials believe the figure is grossly inflated.
Mr Davis also rounded on Mr Barnier for suggesting last week that the Brexit negotiations had produced ‘no decisive progress’, despite significant developments on issues such as the rights of EU citizens and Northern Ireland.
He said the EU bureaucrat ‘wants to put pressure on us, which is why the stance in the press conference – bluntly, I think it looked a bit silly because there plainly were things that we had achieved’.
Mr Davis said concern about filling the financial black hole in the Brussels accounts after Britain leaves was ‘the thing that frightens them most’.
And he accused the EU of deliberately dragging its feet on trade talks in a bid to force the UK to hand over more cash. ‘They have set this up to try to create pressure on us on money,’ he said. ‘That’s what it’s about, they are trying to play time against money.’
Last week, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox accused Brussels of trying to ‘blackmail’ the UK. Mr Davis said the ‘strict position’ was that there was ‘ no enforceable’ legal basis for the UK to pay money to Brussels.
But he said Britain was willing to pay for its ‘moral and political’ obligations as well as its legal ones in order to smooth negotiations.
In a sign of UK goodwill, the Government is set to announce this week that it will continue to contribute to a number of EU science projects after we have left the EU.
Government lawyers last week gave their EU counterparts a twoand-a-half hour deconstruction of its financial claims, which Mr Davis said had irritated Mr Barnier.
‘This is what the EU elite do’