Britain’s new Labour-led government has vowed to improve ties with the EU, and a possible summit between the two sides is being floated.
“Britain is back here on the European stage” and will act as a “good faith party”, the country’s new minister for European Union relations told Euronews.
“We are going to be a government that respects international law, a government that stands tall on the world stage,” Nick-Thomas Symonds said.
“And yes, in respect of the Windsor framework our commitment is to implementing that, and I’m not saying for a moment we’re always going to agree, but we will always be a good faith party,” he added.
The minister spoke to Euronews from Blenheim Palace in southern England, where a summit of the European Political Community attended by nearly 50 European leaders was being held on Thursday.
The gathering was the second occasion for the new Labour government to meet with key partners since it swept to power with a landslide victory in the 4 July elections, ending 14 years of Conservative leadership.
Although migration, energy cooperation and the fight against foreign interference were the official topics on the agenda, London had indicated it hoped the summit would allow it to “reset” relations with European partners.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in his opening remarks to the gathered leaders that the UK “will strengthen our existing relationships and we will build new ones.”
“This includes resetting our relationship with the EU because I believe that the UK and the EU, working together as sovereign partners, are a powerful force for good across our continent, for peace, for security, for prosperity, for all our people,” he added.
Last week, Starmer met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof on the margins of the NATO military alliance summit in Washington. He also had meetings with Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as European Council President Charles Michel, on the sidelines of the EPC summit.
“The reset that we want to have is first the one of tone,” Thomas-Symonds told Euronews. “This is about building a constructive new partnership between the UK and the EU that looks to the challenges of the 2020s and not to the past.”
“And what we want to do is to look at a number of areas where it really is the mutual benefit of the EU and the UK to be working together particularly when we see the very threatening international picture that there is.”
“Britain is back here on the European stage today,” he added.
Michel: ‘Same ambition for more prosperity’
The prospect of holding an EU-UK summit in the coming months was also raised, according to the European Council chief.
“It’d be good if this is possible in the future to have a bilateral summit so that we can put in place a clear framework for strategic cooperation between the United Kingdom and the EU,” Michel told Euronews.
“We are absolutely convinced that, when we face so difficult and extraordinary global challenges, we need to cooperate much more. We need to coordinate much more.”
“And I can tell you, because I represent the EU in the G7, in the G20, that we can observe that very spontaneously, the United Kingdom and the EU, we share the same ambition for more prosperity, for more stability,” he added.
The UK was said to be keen to strike a defence pact with the EU and amend the veterinary agreement and freedoms for artists. The EU, meanwhile, would like to find common ground on youth mobility and citizens’ rights.
A senior EU official said earlier this week that the bloc is “open-minded to see what can be achieved” but only “as long as we don’t question what has been agreed so far”, making it clear that the bloc would not allow treaties between the two sides to be re-opened.
Organising a summit “will be the responsibility of the next institutional team,” Michel said.
“But I’m very confident that on the EU side, the member states, they will support the idea that it would be good, if we can, to prepare a bilateral summit that can take place in the months to come,” he added.
