I t has been exactly five years since Britain voted to exit the European Union, 17 months since the UK formally left and 174 days since the end of the

Brexit: The EU still can’t move on – no matter how hard it tries | The Independent

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2021-06-23 08:00:09

I t has been exactly five years since Britain voted to exit the European Union, 17 months since the UK formally left and 174 days since the end of the transition period. But in Brussels, there’s one topic that even now just will not go away: Brexit.

“We’re negotiating over sausages while the world burns,” Guy Verhofstadt, who was the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, tells The Independent.

Now chairing a conference on the future of Europe, the former Belgian prime minister despairs at the amount of political bandwidth Brexit still consumes for diplomats, MEPs and officials – and the effect of this on the cross-channel relationship.

“We should be defending our shared interests against emboldened autocrats and other challenges, and uniting behind our liberal-democratic ideals,” he says. “Yet precisely at this time we are divided and distrustful of each other.”

As Verhofstadt references, it is sausages – or as World Trade Organisation wonks would say, “chilled meats” – that are the latest focal point of the Brexit back-and-forth.