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With just 14 days to go until the UK legally severs its ties with the EU, Guy Verhofstadt also insisted he had received assurances from the Brexit secretary regarding anxieties about citizens’ rights.
After British MEPs packed up their offices in Strasbourg for the last time on Thursday, the former Belgian prime minister raised the prospect of the UK rejoining the bloc due to the demands of younger generations.
Taking his seat for the last time in the building on Thursday, the Labour MEP Seb Dance, said: “One day British MEPs will get to sit here again and represent our interests and work with our neighbours to solve common problems. Britain is taking a sabbatical.”
When the comment was put to Mr Verhofstadt on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he replied: “I think that will happen, yeah. It’s difficult to say when actually. “But there will be a young generation in the coming decades who will say ‘look what we have done’ and we want to go back. I think it will happen. Maybe I will not see it in my life, but it will happen.” [...]
On “associate” membership of the EU, Mr Verhofstadt confirmed plans are still being pushed – in a move that would allow Britons to sign up to be citizens of the bloc even after Brexit.
“My idea is that the European Union and European citizenship has to be possible for the European living somewhere else in the world,” he said. [...]