The European Commission President made an unexpected intervention in upcoming Brexit talks when he delivered a somewhat rambling speech at a conference of EU ambassadors yesterday.
The Luxembourgian tore into Britain’s negotiating stance over Brexit and said there was no chance of trade talks beginning before the divorce is settled.
But he also alluded to a mystery “sixth scenario” for the EU to move forward post-Brexit, adding he was confident that it would be this secret solution that the bloc would ultimately adopt.
In an apparent act of brinkmanship, he refused to disclose precisely what this sixth option was – seemingly in retaliation to David Davis and the UK Brexit team’s reluctance to “show its hand” in previous Brexit talks.
He said: ”To the extent that the British government hesitates to announce all its colours, why would I announce ours to inspire theirs?”
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In March, Mr Juncker launched a white paper outlining five possible options for the EU after Britain formally withdraws in 2019.
They ranged from a do-nothing, business-as-usual approach to the full-blown federalism some member states suspect is the overarching aim of Brussels eurocrats.
Another less ambitious proposal, scenario two, was to reduce the EU to nothing more than the single market.
Mr Juncker explicitly dismissed the latter option in his speech to ambassadors and effectively ruled out the remaining four by talking up his surreptitious sixth way.
Mr Juncker said: “We proposed… five scenarios of which I would not exclude any, because I am convinced that there will be a sixth scenario which will finally be the one we propose.
“That is why we did not propose it because if we had proposed it, it would have been killed in the bud.
“I absolutely exclude scenario two which would bring the European Union – the European construction – to the stage of a high-level free trade area.
“This is not the vocation of Europe. Europe is more than the economy. It is more than the single currency.”
Mr Juncker made the remarks following a noticeably frosty meeting between Mr Davis and his European counterpart Michel Barnier yesterday ahead of this week’s round of negotiations.
Relations between the pair appeared strained as they read from two very different hymn sheets, with the Frenchman pleading for Britain to start taking the Brexit talks more “seriously”.