British planes may not be able to land in the EU if Brexit ‘goes wrong’, Jean-Claude Juncker has warned. The European Commission president also said that a four-day quarantine may be imposed on dogs and cats passing from the UK to continental Europe and again on their return journey. Speaking at a public meeting in Freiburg, Germany, Mr Juncker asked: ‘What’s going to happen to air traffic in Europe if everything goes wrong? To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video ‘British planes will not be able to land on the European continent. ‘People didn’t know that. Someone should have told them beforehand.’ Juncker also issued a fresh warning to Theresa May that there must be agreement on the Irish border if she wants a Brexit deal. Despite the rejection of key elements of Mrs May’s Chequers blueprint for Brexit at last month’s informal summit in Salzburg, Mr Juncker insisted the EU still wanted an agreement. However, addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg ahead of the next EU summit in Brussels later this month, he stressed the EU would not compromise on key principles. ‘We will have an interesting meeting as far as Brexit is concerned. We want to have a deal. Those who think a no-deal would be a better solution are not aware of the difficulties such a scenario would imply,’ he said. ‘When it comes to the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, we are sticking to the point of view we have expressed so many times – Ireland first.’ Junker went on to say that there was ‘no real Brexit campaign in terms on actual information’ about what would happen in the UK after Brexit. Mr Juncker continued: ‘What I really regret in the context of Brexit is that there was no real Brexit campaign in terms of actual information in the United Kingdom. ‘The people are finding out now – including British ministers and ministers on the continent – how many questions it poses, all the things we need to resolve. ‘I ask myself what is going to happen to the 250,000 dogs and cats who leave the European continent each year. ‘Right now they just pass through the customs, all these dogs and cats coming to mainland Europe each year. ‘There are lots of people in Europe who just want people and animals to just cross borders, but I think we are going to have a four-day quarantine. ‘If you want to go to Brittany for eight days for holidays, then maybe you need to leave the dog or cat at home, or maybe you will stay home altogether.’ Mr Juncker said he did not want to talk about the UK’s withdrawal at the public meeting, as ‘Brexit is a question of history, Brexit is undoing European history and I like to deal with the future, I like to deal with the people who want Europe’. He added: ‘We are right in the middle of these difficult Brexit negotiations. I’m totally for finding a good way to co-operate with the Brits as friends. We need to keep this civil. ‘We sometimes feel like the Brits feel we are leaving them, but it is the other way round – they are the ones that are leaving.’ The president of the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, told the meeting that a second referendum in which the UK voted to stay in the EU would not pose problems for his area. ‘If they wanted to stay in the EU, that would not be a very big problem for us,’ said Mr Kretschmann. The summit on 18 and 19 October has been billed as the ‘moment of truth’ when it will become clear whether it is possible for the two sides to do a deal. Mrs May has said the government is working on new proposals to resolve the issue of the Irish border – ensuring there is no need for the return of ‘hard border’ controls.
European Commission President Brexit has warned UK planes may not be able to land in the EU if Jean-Claude Juncker goes awry. Speaking at a public meeting in Freiburg, Germany, Juncker suggested most people were unaware about this potential consequence of a no-deal Jean-Claude Juncker, and regretted there had not been a "real Jean-Claude Juncker campaign in terms of actual information" in the UK. "I’m totally for finding a good way to co-operate with the Brits as friends," he said.