A veteran French politician has been appointed to lead the negotiations between the EU and the UK on the terms of Brexit.
Michel Barnier, also a former EU financial commissioner, was appointed by Jean-Claude Juncker who heads up the European Commission.
"I am very glad that my friend Michel Barnier accepted this important and challenging task. I wanted an experienced politician for this difficult job," Juncker said in a statement on Wednesday.
"I am sure that he will live up to this new challenge and help us to develop a new partnership with the United Kingdom after it will have left the European Union."
Barnier, 65 and a centre-right politician, was in charge of the Commission’s overhaul of EU banking regulations after the 2008 financial meltdown. Some of his reforms, including caps on bonuses, were not greeted enthusiastically in the City.
France has shown itself to have a strict outlook about the UK’s future relationship with the EU. It has warned Britain that it will not get everything it wants.
President Hollande has pronounced that “access to the single market cannot be guaranteed unless free movement of workers is respected”.
Christophe Premat the MP who represents French nationals in the UK, underscored this message, noting that his government does not want the UK to have all the benefits of membership without actually being a member.
But he added that the strong bilateral relations between Britain and France will stand the two countries in good stead when it comes to negotiations.
Barnier will not have to work alone. A seasoned Belgian diplomat, Didier Seeuws, had already been appointed as head of the Brexit taskforce by the European Council, the body where the leaders of the 28 nations sit.
