The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator took to Twitter to sneer: “If we had known in advance that blue was so important to the UK, we could simply have replaced our passports by this one,” alongside a photo of the Passport to the European Union booklet, with a blue EU flag on the cover.
This is not the first time bitter Mr Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit coordinator, has attempted to mock the UK’s passport victory.
On Saturday, he tweeted that the UK could have chosen the colour change while remaining an EU member.
He wrote: “There is no EU legislation dictating passport colour. The UK could have had any passport colour it wanted and stay in the EU.”
There is no Brussels regulation which states that EU countries’ passports have to be a certain colour, it is simply just a non-binding European Council resolution from 1981 which recommends burgundy red.
Theresa May’s blue passport announcement, which will see the EU-style burgundy cover that has been a feature since the 1980s finally replaced, was celebrated by Leave voters.
The Prime Minister hailed the move to bring back blue travel documents after Brexit as an expression of the UK’s “sovereignty and independence”.
The return of the iconic blue British passport has been confirmed by the Home Office, and two years on from now thousands will have been issued the new design.
The current burgundy document, which has been around for the last 30 years, since 1988, will be scrapped in a bid for Britain to reclaim its “national identity” after Brexit.
The redesign, which routinely happens every five years, will come as part of a £490million contract which also includes printing and assembling passports and runs for 11-and-a-half years.