Art of charm emotional bids free#

'When it comes to trade, we're considering a free trade agreement with zero tariffs and zero quotas.

Sign up for EUobserver’s daily newsletterĪll the stories we publish, sent at 7.30 AM.īy signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.įoreshadowing tough talks on the future relationship, commission president Ursula von der Leyen received the biggest jeer from Brexiteers when she said the EU will not expose its companies to unfair competition and will insist on a level playing field. He said he hoped that by some miracle Brexit wouldn't happen, and that 'the country that invented common sense, will come to common sense'. 'I have been living in denial ever since the referendum,' commission vice-president Frans Timmermans confessed earlier on Wednesday, at the Socialists & Democrats group's farewell event for Labour MEPs. He said he will miss the colleagues from all over the world, who had been inspired by the EU and the 'masses of things' he could learn from his colleagues. 'I feel very sad, this is a day I never wanted to see although it has always been on the cards,' MEP Seb Dance, one of the 72 MEPs departing, told EUobserver. Labour MEP Richard Corbett said it is a heartbreaking and heartwarming day seeing the solidarity of his colleagues, emphasising that the parliament could not have expanded its power over the preveious decades without the work of the UK MEPs.

'I hold in my heart the knowledge that I will be back at this chamber, celebrating our return to the heart of Europe,' she said before breaking down in tears. 'Now is not the time to campaign to rejoin, but we must keep the dream alive, especially for young people, who are overwhelmingly pro-European,' Green MEP Molly Scott Cato told her fellow MEPs in her farewell speech. 'Sit down, put your flags away, you're leaving, and take them with you,' she said.Ī few far-right and eurosceptic MEPs supported Farage and his party, but mostly the day was about emotional farewells, goodbye hugs and genuinely moving gestures.

In a dramatic scene, Irish MEP and parliament vice-president Mairead McGuinness chairing the debate warned Farage that waving a flag goes against EU rules. We're going, we will be gone,' he said waving a British flag along with his over two dozen Brexit party MEPs. 'Once we've left we are never coming back and the rest frankly is detail. He hailed Britain's central role in Europe saying the British 'twice liberated us, gave its blood to liberate Europe'.īrexit party MEP Nigel Farage, who has campaigned for two decades to take the UK out of the EU, said that the day marks an end to a '47 year political experiment that the British have never been very happy with'. 'In the name of all of us I can only say, we will miss you', he added. The British MEPs 'brought charm, wit, intelligence, sometimes also stubbornness in this house,' the parliament's Brexit point man, MEP Guy Verhofstadt said before the vote. In a debate filled with many tears - and some smears - British MEPs pledged to come back while pro-Brexit MEPs promised never to return. After the vote, MEPs stood up and sang 'Auld Lang Syne' a traditional British farewell song, with some joining hands, others holding up a EU-UK football scarf with 'Always United' written on it.

Art of charm emotional bids