New UK foreign minister Boris Johnson made his keenly-awaited first appearance in Brussels on Monday,
The meeting of EU foreign ministers will be the first time that Johnson, who campaigned fiercely for Britain to leave the EU but subsequently dropped out of the race to become Britain's next prime minister, has met his European counterparts.
Speaking to reporters before the meeting on Monday, he said that leaving the EU “does not mean in any way that we are leaving Europe” in terms of foreign policy and security cooperation.
Events in the last few days in Turkey and Nice he said, showed “the importance of that” and the former London Mayor referred to the other 27 EU ministers as his “friends” and “colleagues”.
Johnson’s European counterparts reportedly abandoned their plans to have Sunday dinner with him for reasons unstated but commission vice president Federica Mogherini stepped in for the meal.
Mogherini later said that “our joint work continues” and spoke of Johnson going to “join the EU family” in Monday’s talks where ministers were due to talk with US secretary of state John Kerry about the failed Turkish military coup, war in Syria, the fight against Islamic State, the situation in Libya, Russia relations and the war in Ukraine, and the Middle East Peace Process.
Johnson’s trip to Brussels was not as straightforward as planned – he was forced to make an emergency landing at Luton airport en route after technical difficulties.
The fall-out from the British EU Brexit referendum shows no sign of abating, with new UK prime minister Theresa May using a visit to Edinburgh last week to reassure Scottish voters she will not trigger Article 50 exit negotiations until a “UK approach” to the break-up has been agreed with leaders in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has refused to rule out Scotland remaining in both the EU and UK.
The SNP leader said if Brexit talks do not go according to plan, she would consider a second referendum on Scottish independence in 2017.
Speaking on BBC TV on Sunday, Sturgeon said May had put Scotland in 'a very, very strong position' when it comes to triggering Article 50, which sets a two-year time limit on negotiations to leave.
The pair met when May made her visit to the Scottish capital on Friday, her first official trip as Prime Minister.
Asked if May had given her a veto over triggering Article 50, Sturgeon told the BBC: 'That certainly appeared to be an interpretation that some put on the Prime Minister's remarks after the meeting...and certainly from what she said after the meeting, I think that puts Scotland in now in a very, very strong position. That's a position I am going to use as well as I can.”
Meanwhile, the UK’s former attorney general has said the UK government would need the British Parliament’s approval to trigger Article 50.
Dominic Grieve said it is “extremely farfetched” to believe the government could “take a decision of such massive importance to the UK” without getting the approval of Parliament.
Speaking on Sunday, the former barrister said: “We undoubtedly need a vote in Parliament. It is a matter of convention. The idea that a government could take a decision of such massive importance to the UK without parliamentary approval seems to me to be extremely farfetched.”
British MP Gisela Stuart, who campaigned forcefully to leave the EU, said at the weekend that she “understands” the argument that Article 50 would first need approval by the UK parliament.
Such sentiments are echoed by former senior UK Liberal MEP Andrew Duff, now a visiting fellow at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre, who told this website that UK parliamentary approval “would be necessary” before Article 50 is triggered.
Even so, in a blog, Duff, an arch Europhile who supported the Remain camp, accepted that “out means out.”
He adds, “And that applies, of course, not only to the UK as a whole but to any constituent part of it that chooses to break away: an independent Scotland would have third country status as far as the EU is concerned, albeit with important legacy attributions that would favour its own swift accession as the EU’s 28th member state.”
Duff says, “Delay in triggering Article 50 will accentuate the risk that the British contagion spreads to other states, notably the Visegrad Four [Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia]. Brexit is already being exploited by anti-European forces across the Union: and in 2017 the Netherlands, France, Germany and possibly Italy all face critical national elections.
"The longer the new British prime minister delays invoking Article 50, the more will Europe’s political and constitutional crisis escalate. [Former Prime minister] David Cameron’s legacy is to have ruined the United Kingdom; his successor should not risk the charge that they ruined Europe too.”
The new minister in charge of negotiating Britain's exit David Davis, has said that the UK is likely to formally trigger Article 50 "before or by the start of next year".
However, German centre right MEP Elmar Brok, chair of the European Parliament’s influential foreign affairs committee, told CNN that he wants to see formal Brexit talks and the UK’s “divorce” from the EU to begin “by October or November.”