EU should overhaul itself in wake of Brexit, Verhofstadt says

The UK's decision to leave the European Union (EU) is an opportunity for the bloc to reform and respond to voters "critical" of the institution, the European Parliament's Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt said on Thursday.

Britons voted in a referendum on June 23, 2016, to leave the EU. The country is in a two-year negotiation process to organise its withdrawal, expected in March 2019.

Disenchantment with the EU was a reason the Dutch Party for Freedom, the National Front in France and Austria's Freedom Party were able to draw support at elections this year.

"Brexit is an ideal moment to reflect on the future of the union we belong to," Verhofstadt told a joint meeting of three Oireachtas committees in the Dáil chamber on Friday.

The elections in Austria, France, the Netherlands and "hopefully Germany  – these are not votes for the status quo. It is them saying we have one last chance to make it better."

The Dáil is the Irish parliament in Dublin. Germany holds an election on Sunday in which Chancellor Angela Merkel, in power for 12 years, faces a rising challenge from the right-of-centre Alternative for Germany.

Brexit

The fourth round of Brexit talks has been delayed by a week, to September 25. 

British Prime Minister Theresa May will make an "open and generous offer" to the rest of the EU in a speech in Florence on Friday in an attempt to break the current negotiating deadlock, the BBC reported, citing a Cabinet minister. 

The UK wants to move talks on to trade, but the bloc is seeking to settle terms of the divorce first (specifically how much Britain will pay for commitments made before it leaves), citizens' rights and Northern Ireland's border with the Republic, which will become the only UK/EU land frontier.

EU leaders will decide in October if "sufficient progress" has been made for the talks to move on to where the UK wants to take them.

If not, then a decision may not come until December, leaving just over a year to work out a complex trade deal.

"We don't see sufficient progress to call for the second stage of the negotiations," Verhofstadt said. "The first three rounds were slow. Let's be blunt. And we hope the next round can speed up the negotiations."

On Northern Ireland and the Republic, he repeated the need for the Good Friday Agreement to be kept in any Brexit deal "in all its parts", and he rejected any idea of a hard border between the two Irelands – meaning no border posts or passport controls for UK or Irish citizens.

He dismissed, too, the idea of an 'invisible' border.

"If the border is not visible, it is not a border," Verhofstadt said.

The UK has already said the 1998 Good Friday Agreement – which set the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and brought the province's Troubles to an end after 30 years of armed conflict – should be written into the Brexit agreement. The British have said they don't want a 'hard' border.

Borders

Verhofstadt was asked by a TD about countries with external EU frontiers putting up metal 'borders' of barbed wire as a response to the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have arrived trying to enter the bloc.

"There is a lack of European policy," he said. "It is completely crazy to have freedom of movement inside the territory and not own the management of the border outside that. It is nonsense."

He said the budget for the European Border and Coast Guard Agency is €250 million compared with €62 billion for the US Homeland Security, without giving a currency, and said the means were not being given to "tackle the challenges of today."

Last year, the EU as a whole failed to show leadership and solidarity in the face of the largest global displacement crisis since World War II, Human Rights Watch said in a review of 2016. 

Much of the debate about policy responses focused on concerns about the impact on security and cultural identity and growing support for populist parties with xenophobic platforms, the group said. 

EU policies focused primarily on preventing arrivals and outsourcing responsibility for asylum seekers and refugees to other regions, it said.  

(Alistair Holloway, alistair.holloway@wort.lu, +352 49 93 739)