UK POOL
London - 30 January 2017
1. European Union Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt approaching podium
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Guy Verhofstadt, EU Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator:
"And I have to tell you, I (have just) come back from the US and my impression is that we have a third front, for the moment, undermining the European Union and it is Donald Trump. We have joined them across the Atlantic, as you know and you'll have seen yourself, Trump spoke very favourably of the fact that also other countries will want to break away from the European Union and that he hoped for a disintegration of the European Union."
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3. SOUNDBITE (English) Guy Verhofstadt, EU Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator:
"There is not one family living on the continent and certainly also not in Britain who has no grandfather, grandmother, member of the family, who was not a victim of these stupidities, and of these atrocities at the end of the 19th and the whole 20th century. So putting your political thinking, and the future organisation of Europe on nationalist ideas is the most stupid thing you can do. It's playing with fire knowing what it has created in the past."
4. Verhofstadt returns to seat after speech to answer questions
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5. SOUNDBITE (English) Guy Verhofstadt, EU Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator:
"We need also to be open and generous to the individual UK citizens. I can tell you I receive every day tens of letters, until now I don't know how many - I didn't summarise them. Every day I receive tens of millions of citizens who are saying 'don't leave us alone. We feel still European citizens, and we want to continue to have our link with Europe because we make part of the same civilisation'. That is what we don't understand in Europe, that is we have a common heritage - a common civilisation, history, architectural, cultural, literature, you name it."
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6. SOUNDBITE (English) Guy Verhofstadt, EU Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator:
"We are scrutinising, thinking, debating how we could achieve that (continued European link)... That individual UK citizens would think their links with Europe are not broken forever, as he doesn't want to."
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7. SOUNDBITE (English) Guy Verhofstadt, EU Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator:
"The timetable is as follows - if we start by the end of May, the beginning of June the negotiations, take then 14 or 15 months, and then has to start the so-called consent procedure in the parliament. Because we need to be ready before the European elections of 2019. So that means that the real time frame - period for negotiation - is around 15 months. And we need to start on the consent procedure in a quite sensitive moment. It is a few months before the European elections, you know how politicians are sensitive, I should say, in a period just before elections. So it will be absolutely key that parliament is taken on board from day one of these negotiations, otherwise it will be very difficult to have a green light at the end of the consent procedure. So that is our role in this, all agreements need to be approved by parliament, if not then there is simply no agreement and there is an exit from Britain outside the European Union without any arrangement."
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