Guy Verhofstadt MEP is certain that a “young generation” will reverse the decision made by the 2016 referendum voters and force the UK to rejoin the EU.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday, the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator said: “I think that will happen. It is difficult to say when.
“But there will be a generation, a young generation in the coming decades who will say, ‘What have we done? We want to go back.’
“It will happen. Maybe I will not see it in my life any more, but it will happen.”
In October, British former prime minister and Remain campaigner John Major also claimed that a younger generation would one day force the UK to rejoin the political bloc — because all of the elderly Brexit voters would be dead.
“In the end, the young are going to win because they will be here and the elderly won’t.
“One day, I confidently predict, the young ones will reenter the EU or form a new alliance with them,” Mr Major had said.
–A “European” citizenship–
Mr Verhofstadt also said during the BBC interview that the European Union is looking into offering Britons distraught at losing free movement to the continent to be able to sign up as individuals for “associate” membership of the EU.
Further, he said that the upcoming conference on the Future of Europe would also look at developing “European citizenship” as a separate status to being the citizen of a country which is a member of the EU — a move that would elevate the nature of the European Union above a bloc of nations, but a superstate itself.
“Not only for UK citizens,” Mr Verhofstadt said. “My idea is that the European Union and European citizenship has to be possible for a European living somewhere else in the world.”
The Europhile, who admitted in May that the EU wants an “empire”, claimed that citizenship is not based on geography, saying: “Citizenship is not limited to a territorial definition of citizenship. But people who have their links with Europe could keep their citizenship with the European Union, so it’s not about the UK only.”
“This is not for now, but is for the future, this European citizenship,” he said.
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