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"Macron can only really lead Europe if he is in full cooperation with Germany," said Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform. "France needs an engaged, co-operative Germany."

The developments in Britain took place as Michel Barnier, the EU Brexit negotiator, backed Ireland’s bid to avoid a hard border. “I know that this point is politically sensitive in the UK, it is not less sensitive in Ireland,” he said at a Centre for European Reform conference in Brussels yesterday.

Michel Barnier says it is odd to be talking about Brexit at a Centre or European Reform conference about the future of the EU. But he goes on
"Brexit could prove to be a turning point in the European project.
The year 2016 could be seen as a moment of reckoning. It could be the point where the EU realises “no one will do for us what we don’t do for ourselves.”
Barnier shows a slide which he says David Cameron used to use to justify his faith in the single market.

The U.K. needs to decide if it wants to stay “close to the European model” after leaving the EU or “gradually move away from it,” Michel Barnier, the bloc’s chief Brexit negotiator, said Monday.In a speech at the Brussels base of the Centre for European Reform, a British think-tank, Barnier said the answer to that question “will be important and even decisive” for the future partnership “and shape also the conditions for ratification of that partnership in many national parliaments and obviously in the European Parliament.”

Barnier told a Centre for European Reform conference in Brussels on Monday that Northern Ireland will require a specific solution and that it’s up to “those who wanted Brexit” to come up with ideas. In comments that will rile the pro-UK. Northern Irish party that props up Theresa May’s government, he said Northern Ireland already has different rules to Britain. “Unique circumstances require specific solutions,” he said.

Michel Barnier told a conference in Brussels that London needs to provide clear proposals soon to find a way for the UK to leave the EU in 2019 but still have a transparent, open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. "Those who wanted Brexit must offer solutions," Barnier told a Centre for European Reform conference in Brussels.

In a speech to the Centre for European Reform which will enrage Eurosceptics, Mr Barnier insisted that any attempt to create new rules after Brexit even on domestic issues such as farming and healthcare will meet fierce resistance from the EU.

The European Union’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has ruled out the prospect of UK financial firms benefiting from a special post-Brexit deal that will give them continued access to Europe’s single market.“Those who claim that the UK should cherry-pick part of the single market must stop this contradiction,” Mr Barnier said at the Centre for European reform conference in Brussels on Monday.“The single market is a package of four indivisible freedoms, common rules, institutions and enforcement structure. The UK knows these rules very well, like the back of its hand. It has contributed to defining them.”