EU envoy: 'doors are open' for UK to deepen cooperation

Burnham says EU ‘made it clear’ UK not offered associate membership

Asked about associate membership on Monday, the prime minister said the European Union had “made it clear” that the status — which the EU has recently suggested Canada could become the bloc’s first to hold — “wasn’t open to us.” He was speaking to reporters on his flight to the United States for the UN General Assembly in New York, where he plans to meet European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday.

The Made in Europe scheme — formally called the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) — is yet to be finalised. The UK government is concerned that plans to favour EU companies could harm British manufacturing. The proposals aim to curb the presence of Chinese companies in the EU by giving manufacturers inside the bloc priority for public contracts and subsidies.

Burnham said the Made in Europe plan could “affect British industry and supply chains” and that he would raise his concerns with von der Leyen. “We have considerable support among the member states for the position we are taking, because Europe’s argument is not with us,” Burnham told reporters. “We both suffer the same effects as other countries, particularly steel and the issue it raises for the steel industry in Europe and in Britain. We are making the argument ‘we are not your enemies here… we are not the problem’. Made in Europe is dealing with a different problem. We are making the argument that ‘let’s avoid collateral damage’.”

EU envoy at Liberal Democrat conference

Speaking at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton on Monday, the EU’s new ambassador to the UK, Jukka Salovaara, was asked whether the UK could rejoin the bloc or be granted associate membership. “The doors are open but it’s very much up to the UK public to identify and decide on its level of ambition when it comes to deepening cooperation with the EU,” Salovaara said.

The EU has recently suggested Canada could become the bloc’s first “associate member.”

UK-EU summit and youth mobility

Burnham said the next phase of engagement would address “practical agreement that will further boost the British economy, and those issues are the substance of the summit alongside EU requests around youth mobility.”

The planned UK-EU summit had already been postponed in the wake of Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation as prime minister in July. Tensions over the Made in Europe policy have reportedly further delayed this year’s planned summit.

Rejoining the EU and the next manifesto

When asked on Monday whether he would rule out committing to rejoining the EU in Labour’s next general election manifesto, Burnham said: “Our focus at the moment is on a UK-EU summit which we hope will take place later this year. My immediate priority is to build on the good work that Keir [Starmer] did in rebuilding bridges, because those bridges were broken in the early part of this decade.” He said questions about rejoining were “for another day.”

Burnham said last September he would like to see the UK back in the EU in his lifetime. Earlier this year, he described Brexit as “damaging” but said “the last thing we should do right now is re-run those arguments.”

UN speech on the Brexit decade

Burnham told reporters his own speech to the UN General Assembly later in the week would reflect on the decade since the 2016 Brexit vote and “the turbulence comes when outside actors seek to manipulate, to distort facts, influence the British democratic process.” He added: “Going into the next decade, we need to be clear-eyed about that and become stronger and more on the front foot about challenging that.”