Jose Manuel Barroso Quotes

It's difficult to see how the U.K. can be a member of the E.U. if it's not adherent to the principles set out in the convention.

The E.U. is founded on the Treaties which apply only to the Member States who have agreed and ratified them.

Let me be absolutely clear: I think it is defeatist to sort of say we want to leave the European Union. We're going to try and change the rules and change the way it works and change the objectives that it has in order to make it something that works for Britain.

The EU represents a highly developed system for mutual interference in each other’s domestic affairs right down to beer and sausages.

We've stated very clearly that no negotiating chapters between the European Union and Turkey will be concluded before the Ankara Protocol is complied with: that's to say before Turkey grants all E.U. member states, including Cyprus, access to its ports.

We have to ask ourselves, is it really right that the E.U. should just continue to expand, conferring upon all new member states all the rights of membership?

We have the eurozone. Could we accept to be cleared, regulated, and de facto have inflows and outflows from a country that has decided to leave the E.U.? For me, definitely not.

Anything that keeps the U.K. close to the E.U. and best of all, in the E.U., would make me personally very happy.

Membership of the E.U. is not about cherry picking. It brings a lot of advantages and, of course, it requires a lot of responsibilities.

We then need to consider carefully how the E.U. law that is going to be imported into our own law will operate. Its processes and interpretation have always been different from our own domestic law.

Much as criticism can and has been made as to how E.U. law has been created, there is much in it that affects our daily lives for the better and is welcomed by many without them being necessarily aware of where it comes from.

While we're members of the European Union, we don't have an immigration policy. We can't have an immigration policy. It's a charade for people to pretend we do.

I think that we have refined greatly our notions of sovereignty in the EU. Its members consider themselves to be sovereign governments, but they have ceded a part of their sovereignty to the Union level, and their sovereignty is now penetrated by EU law.

We could not have parliamentary sovereignty with a European Parliament.

If Turkey become a member of the EU, of course Turks would lose a part of this identity, just as Europe would lose a part of its own. It would also be a different Europe then. Accepting Turkey into the EU is an ambitious political endeavor of historical proportions. Europe would become a strong, multi-religious unit.

Nations are an historic reality in Europe. They all have different histories, and they joined the EU at very different times and under widely differing circumstances. I was mayor of Warsaw for three years and always in favor of Poland joining the EU. But I also experienced how we had to implement EU regulations that were completely inappropriate to our situation.

Having the United Kingdom in the European Union gives us much greater confidence about the strength of the transatlantic union and is part of the cornerstone of institutions built after World War II that has made the world safer and more prosperous.

The will of the British people must now be put into effect as quickly as possible. Under Article 50 of the EU Treaty the UK must leave the European Union within two years at the latest.

The bureaucratic method of building an integrated Europe has exhausted its potential.

70 percent of Turkey’s citizens favored the EU; today it is only 50 percent. If you ask if they want Turkey to become an EU member, 60 to 65 percent still say yes. But if you ask: Do you believe Europe will accept Turkey, 60 percent say no.

At the core of the European Union must be, as it is now, the single market. Britain is at the heart of that Single Market, and must remain so.

I think that the Brexit negotiations have to be a big thing that determines the democratic fight-back and galvanizes democratic Europe again against this rising tide of nationalism.

I think the longer Britain is in Europe the better.

Europe is a state with several provinces

Our task is nothing less than the creation of a new constitutional order for a new united Europe.