Andrew Adonis – 2021 Comments Following Appointment as Chair of the European Movement

The comments made by Andrew Adonis on 8 March 2021.

It is an honour and a challenge to become chair of the European Movement at this time of crisis in Britain’s relations with Europe. Churchill founded the European Movement to bring Britain and continental Europe closer together – socially, economically and politically – after the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust. We have a duty to seek to do the same again after the experience of COVID19 and Brexit, faced with the twin emergencies of climate change and a global slump.

We will campaign strongly to put right the immediate failings of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, including the lack of automatic EU work visas for artists, musicians, engineers and architects; the absence of EU market access for our huge financial and business services industries; and the end of our membership of the Erasmus scheme for student exchanges. Millions are affected and we need to change these damaging policies as soon as possible, which almost no one voted for as part of Brexit.