Report: Britain is close to returning to the European Union

London - Ofoq News - The Financial Times revealed on Sunday that Britain may rejoin the European Union within just one parliamentary term, if London and Brussels reach a political agreement, according to a new report supported by a former European Union official and a prominent member of the European Parliament.

Pro-European lobby group Better for Britain says fears that Britain's EU accession would be divisive and take "a decade" are overblown. The group cites Finland, which completed its accession to the European Union in less than three years in the mid-1990s, as evidence of this.

A decade after Brexit, the possibility of Britain returning to the European Union returned to the political agenda last month, following Prime Minister Andy Burnham's comments that Britain could "go ahead" and overturn the results of the 2016 referendum.

Speaking to the Labor conference, Burnham warned that the current Brexit arrangements were damaging the British economy, and promised a national public debate on “options” for shaping future relations with the EU, ahead of a major UK-EU summit expected next month.

British government ministers have not yet disclosed the details of how this discussion will take place, but Burnham's initiative was quickly welcomed by several European Union leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

A YouGov poll conducted after Burnham's speech showed that 52% of Britons would vote to join the EU, compared to 27% who would vote to remain outside.

The poll also revealed that more than a fifth of Leave voters in the 2016 referendum would now vote to return to the European Union.

To rejoin the European Union, the UK government must submit an application under Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union. This will start a negotiation process on 35 different chapters of EU law. Once negotiations are completed, accession requires unanimous approval from all EU member states, followed by ratification by national parliaments.

The report, led by Oliver Nicholls, a former senior official at the UK Department of Trade, suggests that the combination of the limited regulatory changes the UK has made since Brexit, its deep integration into the European market, and the shared values ​​between the two sides, would enable a much faster accession process than that undertaken by smaller and less developed countries.

The report also indicates the possibility of resolving issues that may be controversial, such as Britain's accession to the eurozone and the Schengen area, which allows travel between countries without routine passport inspections at internal borders. The report's authors note that many EU member states, including Sweden and Denmark, do not use the euro.

Sir Jonathan Ball, a former European Commission official who was Britain's main liaison with the EU when Britain renegotiated the terms of its EU membership in 2015, welcomed the report as a "sober and useful contribution" to the Brexit debate. He said that Britain would enter any re-accession negotiations from a unique position, bearing the “imprint of decades of membership” in the European Union.