EU to set up embassy in UK after Brexit: Report

In this file photo taken on March 19, 2018 EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier addresses a press conference after his meeting with Britain’s Brexit minister at the European Commission in Brussels. (AFP photo)

The European Union will establish a new embassy in the United Kingdom once the country leaves the EU in March next year.

The BBC said in a report on Saturday that the new mission, called a “delegation”, will comprise of 29 diplomats and will operate for the European External Action Service (EEAS), which is EU’s foreign policy arm.

Ambassadors of EU’s 27 other nations will have to approve the plan for the new embassy in London in their discussion next week. The envoys will be presented with the details on Wednesday, said the report.

Britain will officially leave the EU on March 29, 2019. It currently hosts 27 EU staffs at the Europe House, in Smith Square, Westminster, where many government and parliament buildings are located. It is not yet known whether the new mission will be based in the same facility, which was formerly the headquarters of the ruling Conservative Party.

The report said the EU will most likely close its offices in other UK provinces of Scotland and Wales but it will create a new mission in Belfast, the capital of the Northern Ireland, to oversee how a final agreement on Brexit, if there would be any, would be implemented in Northern Ireland.

The EU and the Conservative-led government in Britain have been locked over a dispute on how to regulate trade through their single land border after Brexit so that there would be no return to a hard border between EU state of Ireland and UK province of Northern Ireland while the EU could protect the integrity of its customs union and single market. The issue is the key to a comprehensive deal on Brexit that could be finalized this month.


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