By Philip Blenkinsop
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – David Cameron’s appointment as British foreign minister may have raised eyebrows in EU capitals, but the bloc sees the return of the man who triggered the Brexit referendum more as a continued defrosting of relations than a lurch back to turbulent times.
As prime minister, Cameron called the referendum on European Union membership in 2016, although he campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU. He quit hours after Britain voted narrowly to leave, vacating his parliamentary seat a couple of months later.
“Welcome back David Cameron,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, soon after Cameron was appointed as Foreign Secretary in a cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The French, German, Dutch and Irish foreign ministers sent online congratulations and Sweden’s top diplomat said he looked forward to working with Cameron, a centrist Conservative who was Britain’s prime minister from 2010-16.
One EU diplomat said it was a sign of a continued normalising of EU-UK relations since Britain left the EU in 2020 that the new foreign minister was not an ardent Brexiteer.
“Let’s hope this is a consolidation of pragmatism over ideology in our relations. Regardless of past mistakes, this might be a good thing,” the diplomat said.
Another EU diplomat said Cameroon’s absence from politics for seven years meant he was partly an unknown quantity, but felt he was more a pragmatist than not.
While the European Commission declined to comment, Maros Sefcovic, its vice-president who oversees the European Union’s relations with Britain, sent congratulations to Cameron’s predecessor James Cleverly, who has become interior minister.
Cleverly’s term as foreign minister, under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, led to a turnaround in post-Brexit EU-UK ties, thawing from stubborn, bitter stand-offs to pragmatic negotiations yielding results.
This year, the two have struck a deal to simplify shipments from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland while avoiding a hard border with neighbour EU member state Ireland, signed a cooperation pact on financial services and agreed Britain will rejoin the EU’s flagship Horizon scientific research programme.
Britain and the EU are now pursuing a deal to avoid imposing tariffs on their trade in electric vehicles.
The EU and Britain have also cooperated closely within NATO and the G7 on sanctions against Russia. Indeed, the EU’s focus on geopolitical tensions and its green transition means bilateral ties with Britain have dropped down the agenda.
Sefcovic credited his past year working with Cleverly with “putting EU-UK relations back on track”, adding that he looked forward to continuing this work with Cameron.
(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; additional reporting by Andreas Rinke in Berlin; editing by Mark Heinrich)
