As she unveiled her 27-team of commissioners last Tuesday, the incoming President of the European Commission, announced Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, will stay in his role beyond October 31.
Ursula von der Leyen, who was chosen by the European Council in July to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker, said Brussels was in desperate need of Mr Barnier’s expertise, amid growing expectations that Boris Johnson will have to request a delay to Brexit beyond October 31.
As head of the Commission’s task force on Brexit, Mr Barnier has led negotiations, hammering out deals on everything from the £39billion divorce bill to the highly controversial Irish backstop.
He famously refused to compromise on the border, maintaining that only a legally watertight measure to prevent customs checks and protect the EU’s single market would be endorsed by Brussels.
This morning, during a plenary session of the European Parliament, the French politician restated his position on Brexit, and told Boris Johnson to stop “pretending” he is negotiating a deal.
Mr Barnier said: “Almost three years after the UK referendum, I don’t think we should be spending time pretending to negotiate.
“I think we need to move forward with determination.”
It is not exactly clear what Mr Barnier’s strategy really is, and his unwillingness to compromise has been heavily condemned by eurosceptics in the last two years.
According to unearthed reports though, his intransigence is nothing new as the Frenchman has actively worked towards getting round the result of a plebiscite before.
At the June 2004 European Council meeting, the governments of the 25 EU member states signed a constitutional treaty for the bloc.
France and the Netherlands held a referendum on the issue in 2005, but it was widely rejected and the “EU constitution” was never ratified.
However, in 2009, the bloc agreed to the Lisbon Treaty with, according to analysis at the time by the London think tank Open Europe, 96 percent of the text the same as the Constitutional Treaty.
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Reports from 2006 and 2007, reveal that it was Mr Barnier, alongside other members of the Amato Group – a group of high-level European politicians – who worked on rewriting the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe into what became known as Lisbon.
At the time, Mr Barnier was a special adviser to the then President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, who was pushing for the EU to become a “federation of states” with “greater shared sovereignty”.
The Lisbon Treaty, which was signed in 2007 and came into force on December 1, 2009, included prominent changes, such as a more powerful European Parliament and the creation of a long-term President of the European Council.
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage famously claimed that it was Lisbon that made him an “enemy” of the EU.
Speaking on his LBC show in 2015, Mr Farage said: “In 2005, the European Union had produced its own constitution. The first proper blueprint. The first genuine admission that what they were building wasn’t a free trade zone, it was a state. And they put it to referendums.
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“The French rejected it, the Dutch rejected it and many other people, had they had the chance, would have rejected it.
“And what did the EU do? Did they learn the lesson? Did they say ‘Oh well obviously people don’t want a state with a flag, an anthem and an army.’
“Did they row back?
“No, they rebranded it as the Lisbon Treaty.
“They forced it through without giving the French and Dutch another option. The Irish voted against it, but were forced to vote again.
“And from that moment, I have been an enemy of the entire project.”