Think Brits are bored of talking about the B-word? Imagine what it’s like in Brussels

You may have noticed Brexit hasn’t been in the news as much recently – as least compared to the blanket coverage of the past year. What you may not know is it has also, rather suddenly, dropped off the agenda in Brussels, too.

This hit home for me this week when Michel Barnier gave a speech at a Belgian university. Barnier’s only job is Brexit negotiator – it’s not like he has anything else to do (at least officially). And yet, ahead of the address, his team warned ever-hungry British journalists, in quite stark terms: there won’t be much new in it, they said, and it won’t really be about Brexit.

If even Michel “Mr Brexit” Barnier himself has run out of things to say about Britain’s departure, you can probably guess how the rest of the European Union capital is faring. Officials I’ve spoken to this week – including those usually quite interested in the subject – are more focused on the upcoming European parliament elections. Or really just about anything else. Everyone here has turned over the different theories, scenarios and predictions a hundred times already, and decided they have no idea what’s going to happen.

The truth is this was planned. At their last summit EU leaders, tired of being constantly called back to Brussels to talk about Britain’s problems, decided to grant a long extension for a variety of reasons. But probably the biggest, and most self-interested of these, was so they didn’t have to think about it until October. “Use it wisely,” president Donald Tusk told the Brits, like a father waving his kids off to summer camp with a £20 note to spend on sweets.

Even the dissenting voices against a long extension were using similar logic. French president Emmanuel Macron supposedly didn’t want the delay to run past 8 May, so the Brits wouldn’t show up at another summit scheduled for the next day and talk about the B-word again.

Thus, things are mostly parked until the autumn, and the EU can deal with some of its other problems (of which it has plenty). The truth is that if the Brits themselves are bored of talking about their own politics, it was always going to be the case that other countries would be too.

Yours,

Jon Stone

Europe correspondent