{"id":1941,"date":"2026-09-30T19:03:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2026-09-30T19:03:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:03:46","slug":"macron-says-welcome-back-after-burnham-floats-uk-return-to-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=1941","title":{"rendered":"Macron says &#8216;welcome back&#8217; after Burnham floats UK return to EU"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>French President Emmanuel Macron reacted on Wednesday to UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham floating the idea of Britain rejoining the European Union by saying in English: \u201cWelcome back.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the British want to come back and if the prime minister is moving in that direction, I think that is very good news both for his country and for Europeans,\u201d Macron added in French at a news conference in Madrid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome back,\u201d he added, standing alongside Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.<\/p>\n<p>Burnham, prime minister since July after Labour MPs turfed out Keir Starmer, said in an interview broadcast earlier on Wednesday that rejoining the EU was among the potential answers to the unavoidable question of what Britain\u2019s future relationship with Europe could look like.<\/p>\n<p>His comments came after he told his ruling Labour Party\u2019s annual conference that he would set out \u201cdifferent options\u201d for future ties with the European Union closer to a planned summit with the bloc later this year.<\/p>\n<p>Macron said the British had \u201calways been useful in helping us simplify things\u201d when the UK was part of the EU and were \u201cdemanding partners\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAndy Burnham is right to have this boldness,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>The French president also pointed to the limits of the UK seeking closer ties with the EU while remaining outside the bloc, a decade after the Brexit vote.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou cannot choose between the freedoms of the union and decide to take what suits us and not the rest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Sanchez took a similar position, calling Brexit \u201ca huge loss, both for the British population and for the whole European project\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>If the UK were to seek to rejoin the bloc \u201cthen of course Spain would applaud it and open its arms again to a brotherly people\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>French President Emmanuel Macron reacted on Wednesday to UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham floating the idea of Britain rejoining the European Union by saying in English: \u201cWelcome back.\u201d \u201cIf the British want to come back and if the prime minister is moving in that direction, I think that is very good news both for his country and for Europeans,\u201d Macron added in French at a news conference in Madrid. \u201cCome back,\u201d he added, standing alongside Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Burnham, prime minister since July after Labour MPs turfed out&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}