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The EU has urged Liz Truss to respect the Brexit agreement, as it called on the incoming British prime minister to take a broader view of Britain’s relationship with Europe.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who is expected to speak to Truss by phone in the coming days, tweeted her congratulations, referring to common challenges, from climate change to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
She said: “I look forward to a constructive relationship, in full respect of our agreements.”
Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s top official in charge of relations with the UK, said a positive relationship between the two was of great strategic importance. “I stand ready to work intensively and constructively with my new UK interlocutor to foster such a partnership, in full respect of our agreements.”
Behind the scenes, EU officials have low expectations of an improvement in relations with Truss, the architect of a bill to override key aspects of the Northern Ireland protocol, which could lead to a trade war.
“The wish on this side is for things to improve, for there to be a more constructive relationship, but I don’t think anybody is holding their breath,” an EU diplomat said.
The diplomat suggested that Truss’s reliance on Eurosceptic MPs in the Conservative parliamentary party did not bode well for her ability to strike compromises. They added: “Looking at where Liz Truss got her support I don’t really expect her to have that much room for manoeuvre. But I would gladly be proved wrong.”
Sources hope that once installed in No 10, Truss will take a different tack to EU relations.
“Obviously the reservations that were there beforehand remain given that she was the foreign secretary that brought through the [Northern Ireland] bill before the summer,” one EU diplomat said.
