British voters were wrong to fear the European Union was depriving their nation of sovereignty by centralising power in Brussels, Guy Verhofstadt said Wednesday, wryly noting the British government was already welcoming China’s Huawei.
Belgian politician Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s point man on the Brexit process made his final speech on the matter, where he implied Britain was set to lose more sovereignty by withdrawing from the Union than by staying.
Speaking shortly before Brexit leader Nigel Farage made his final ever speech in the EU parliament, Mr Verhofstadt referred to letters he claims to have received from British citizens explaining why the country was leaving the European Union this week. Ticking off the various causes and explaining why they shouldn’t actually matter to voters, the Eurocrat namechecked objections including high levels of immigration, and the intransigence of Brussels on renegotiating things like limiting free movement and the political union.
On the concern for voters of losing sovereignty to the European political project — a key concern for Brexiteers for decades and one namechecked by Mr Farage in his own speech — Verhofstadt rubbished the idea, insisting Britain would be worse off as an independent nation-state. Referring to the decision of Boris Johnson’s government to welcome the involvement of Chinese tech giant Huawei into Britain’s future telecommunications critical national infrastructure — a move which has generated enormous controversy because of Huawei’s alleged links to the Chinese government — Verhofstadt said:
What is, in fact, threatening Britain’s sovereignty most? The rules of our Single Market, or the fact tomorrow there will be maybe Chinese 5G masts planted in the British Isles?
…European Countries lost their sovereignty a long time ago, and Europe is the way to regain that sovereignty in the coming years.
Read more: EU’s Lesson from Brexit Is to Take Away MORE National Sovereignty, Says Verhofstadt
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