U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s barb about the EU acting like the Soviet Union has left Brussels seeing red.
EU officials are long accustomed to overheated rhetoric on Brexit from British officials and the British press. Consider, for instance, the Sun’s recent front-page headline, proclaiming: “EU Dirty Rats.”
But Hunt’s remarks, accusing EU leaders of trying to turn the bloc into a prison and likening their actions to Soviet-style repression, drew special outrage, with critics denouncing it as nasty and ignorant.
“I would say respectfully that we would all benefit — and in particular foreign affairs ministers — from opening a history book from time to time,” the European Commission’s chief spokesman, Margaritis Schinas said in response to a question about Hunt’s speech at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, England on Sunday. “That’s the only comment I have,” Schinas added.
When another reporter tried to bait him, asking what book he might recommend to the foreign secretary, Schinas refrained from engaging further.
Beyond the Commission, criticism of Hunt’s remarks has been swift and fierce, and has come both from within and outside the U.K.
Alexander Temerko, the director of U.K. energy company Aquind, who has donated nearly £700,000 to the Conservatives since 2012, said that Hunt apparently “doesn’t know what the Soviet Union was.”
Speaking to POLITICO at the Tory conference, Ukrainian-born Temerko acknowledged that Hunt was comparing the “attitudes” of the two blocs, not the ideologies, but nevertheless delivered a stern critique of the foreign secretary’s words, which have also angered Eastern European EU member countries.
“I think it’s wrong. The Soviet Union was an ideological state … planned economy, through security, control of all scales of life. I think Jeremy doesn’t know what the Soviet Union was. His comparison is very incorrect,” Temerko said.
“The European Union has such different principles. I lived in the Soviet Union. I was born in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union.”
“The Soviet Union was the worst form of state, an anti-humanist state. Europe is different: free trade, free movement.”
In a sign of the potentially significant damage of Hunt’s comment, some of the strongest reaction was from EU countries once located behind the Iron Curtain including the Baltics — countries that ironically have been among the U.K.’s strongest supporters throughout the Brexit process so far.
Estonia’s ambassador to the U.K., Tiina Intelmann, called Hunt’s statement “insulting” on Twitter, adding that the “Soviet regime was brutal.”
Vytenis Andriukaitis, a Lithuanian, who is European commissioner for health and food safety, also had a personal response for Hunt. “I was born in Soviet gulag and been imprisoned by KGB a few times in my life. Happy to brief you on the main differences between #EU and Soviet Union. And also why we escaped the #USSR. Anytime. Whatever helps,” he tweeted.
“Soviets killed, deported, exiled and imprisoned 100 thousands of Latvia’s inhabitants after the illegal occupation in 1940, and ruined lives of 3 generations,” Baiba Braže, Latvia’s ambassador to London wrote on Twitter, “while the EU has brought prosperity, equality, growth, respect.”
In a speech at the Conservative Party conference that was clearly intended to please the party faithful and burnish his credentials as a potential future prime minister, Hunt accused the EU of trying to block the U.K.’s departure — something flatly denied in Brussels.
“What happened to the confidence and ideals of the European dream?” Hunt asked in his speech. “The EU was set up to protect freedom. It was the Soviet Union that stopped people leaving.”
“The lesson from history is clear,” he said. “If you turn the EU club into a prison, the desire to get out won’t diminish. It will grow and we won’t be the only prisoner that will want to escape.”
But some in Brussels say the bullish tone has more to do with British desperation at the state of the Brexit talks.
A senior EU diplomat predicted that the remarks would most offend the EU countries that have been the strongest advocates of maintaining strong ties with Britain after Brexit.
“The gloves are off,” the diplomat said. “It shows the U.K. is losing its cool, how nervous they are.”
“For the Baltics it’s the worst thing to say,” the senior diplomat said, noting the cooperation with London on the cooperative defense initiative known as Permanent Structured Cooperation or Pesco. “They were the U.K.’s best ally in Pesco, those pushing the most to include it in [Pesco] projects,” the senior diplomat added, “Not a very smart move to alienate them.”
Another EU diplomat said: “It’s the Tory party conference, our expectations aren’t particularly high at this moment. But honestly I wonder whether they really consider this rhetoric helpful in view of their ambitions to secure a deal in the next 6 weeks. Or have they already given up?”
Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves called Hunt’s comment “nonsense” and in a series of posts on Twitter likened Hunt to colleagues he met while serving as Estonia’s foreign minister who turned out to be far less impressive than he expected.
“I used to think foreign ministers were the smartest people in democratic governments, perhaps because that was often the case in a presidential system,” Ilves wrote. “Then I became a foreign minister myself, for almost six years.” And, in a clear reference to Hunt, he said, many foreign ministers he met turned out to be a “crony/competitor of the PM.”
Former Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski also slammed Hunt, calling his remarks “cheap and offensive.”
The European Parliament’s Brexit Coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt branded the comments, “Offensive and outrageous.” He said that “Churchill and Thatcher, these great defenders of European freedom and democracy must be turning in their graves.”
Responding to the criticism of Hunt’s speech, a U.K. official said: “The EU is not the Soviet Union as any sensible reading of this speech makes clear.
“What it was, was a passionate plea not to end the partnership between Britain and Europe that defeated totalitarianism and not to become a club where members who leave get punished — which would be totally against the ideals which all European countries, including Britain, have fought so hard for.
“The U.K. wants partnership and friendship with EU countries which is not possible if one side says that whatever happens, the other side must lose out.”
Maïa de La Baume and Ryan Heath contributed reporting.
This story has been updated.
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