EUROPE should be bending over backwards to woo Britain back to the EU and scrap any out-of-date Euro rules which stand in the way of this, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned today.
Mr Sarkozy said it was crazy to just let Europe’s second-biggest economy walk away without a fight – and that MEPs should put a stop to Brexit divorce negotiations and draw up a new treaty to woo back the UK and help build “tomorrow’s Europe”.
He said: “We are losing Europe’s second-largest economy, the UK, and the only thing we’re interested in is the divorce agreement. Not once have we asked ourselves whether this divorce is avoidable. Because I know that it is.”
Mr Sarkozy, who was in power from 2007 to 2012 before being replaced by leftist François Hollande, said a ‘new Europe’ was needed, one which scrapped out of date rules and recognised nation states’ concerns on the economy, immigration and federalism.
And the new treaty must be drawn up before the crunch European Parliament elections in May 2019, Mr Sarkozy told the French weekly Le Point adding: “We have one priority: put a new treaty on the table to define the Europe of tomorrow and profoundly change the rules of the game.”
This new “simplified” EU treaty, he continued, could give Britain a chance to reverse Brexit and stay within an improved Europe.
This “new Europe” should focus on improving the implementation of single market measures, the ex-president said, adding that Brussels should oversee “around 10” major policies, such as agriculture, trade and research, but that the rest should be “without exception the responsibility of member states”.
Mr Sarkozy has called in the past for a new EU treaty that would focus on reforming the Schengen border-free zone, restricting the EU Commission’s remit to a dozen prerogatives, boosting eurozone integration and freezing membership talks with Turkey.
But there is now greater urgency in his plea as the Brexit deadline – March 2019 – draws closer.