EU members hold out hope U.K. will not leave
‘Realists’ demand bloc must move forward
BRUSSELS — While European Union chief Donald Tusk might still be “a dreamer” hoping that Britain is having second thoughts on leaving the EU, other leaders at Thursday’s EU summit tried to shake him back to reality.
Discord over whether the exit process could still be reversed surfaced at the summit in Brussels as British Prime Minister Theresa May was preparing to brief the 27 EU other leaders on the Brexit negotiations that started this week.
Tusk said when British friends asked him if he could imagine a way for Britain to remain part of the bloc, he told them “the EU was built on dreams that seemed impossible to achieve.”
“So who knows? You may say I am a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,” Tusk continued, quoting a lyric from the late John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, however, said the will of the British people had to be respected.
“I am not a dreamer. And I am not the only one,” Michel said.
“What we also need is certainty, for our companies in Belgium, in Europe,” he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel also was focused on imagining an EU without Britain.
“For me, shaping the future of the 27 (remaining) member states has priority over the question of the negotiations with Britain on its exit,” Merkel said.
When May officially triggered the two-year unraveling process in March, she forced the EU to realize it was losing one of its biggest members and a global player.
Tusk, who grew up in Communist Poland before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, said that his personal history has taught him never to give up hope.
And he has not been alone.