Brussels bids muted goodbye to ‘down to earth’ Britain as EU tries to reclaim narrative

Under the cover of darkness, a security guard will take down the British flag that flies outside the European parliament. Its removal won’t leave a gap: the flags, which are arranged in alphabetic order, have always had the UK at the end of the row.

There is no big ceremony in Brussels for Britain’s departure from the EU: rather, lots of smaller ones, some private and behind closed doors.

The city said its farewells on Thursday, lighting up its beautiful Grand Place in the colours of the Union Jack and throwing a festival featuring red telephone boxes and a black London taxi. Brussels itself is apart from the bubble inhabited by the EU institutions, however: the approach there has been no pomp, no circumstance – no last night of the proms.

For the EU authorities, the strategy has been to keep things as low-key as reasonably possible. The three presidents of the commission, council and parliament held a press conference on Friday morning: the EU was losing a member state that was “very pragmatic, very down to earth, very clear in the economic agenda”, Ursula von der Leyen said. Polite, but not exactly the end of the world.

The presidents were not really there to talk about Brexit – instead, Brussels is trying to reclaim the narrative by talking about the future of Europe, and it plans to host a conference on the subject in early May.

Despite the focus on the future, the venue very much recalled the continent’s past: deep in the bowels of the parliament’s dimly lit museum to pan-European democracy, anyone attending was required to walk past long rows of exhibits about the continent blowing itself up in the Second World War.

To the back of the auditorium, banks of tables were staffed by a dozen translators live-interpreting the meeting into all the EU’s working languages; their work wirelessly beamed to the headsets of the audience. This impressive operation is a perfectly routine scene in Brussels, but to anyone not used to the transnational nature of what goes on here, it might look like science fiction.

Two hours before the press conference, on the other side of the modernist plaza where the museum is situated, Brexit Party MEPs had triumphantly marched out of the European parliament’s main entrance. They bore the Union Flag and branded teal umbrellas, and were briefly interrupted by a pro-EU heckler. Later in the evening, just before midnight, Labour MEPs and staffers will gather at Place Jo Cox, a small square in Brussels named after the MP assassinated by a far-right terrorist during the referendum campaign.

It will be one of a few private rites. Inside the building of the now ironically named UK Permanent Representation to the EU – the base for British diplomats in the city – officials are holding a small, informal reception for officials and journalists. UKrep, as it is known, is being shut down because the UK is no longer a member state.

Then, at the beginning of next week, the same building and staff will host another reception, marking the foundation of the UK Mission to the European Union. The mission will have the same assignment as UKrep did: projecting British influence here – just without a seat at the table. As government ministers are fond of saying: Britain is leaving the EU, not Europe.