By William Schomberg<\/p>\n
LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) – British finance minister Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday that she would push for closer integration with the EU to reduce the trade \u200cbarriers put up by Brexit, adding that European countries should cooperate on defence spending \u200ctoo.<\/p>\n
Speaking during a week when Prime Minister Keir Starmer has had to fight to stay in power due to fallout \u200bfrom the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, Reeves said Britain’s future was inextricably bound with that of Europe on both the economy and security.<\/p>\n
“The biggest prize is clearly with the EU. The truth is economic gravity is reality. Almost half of our trade is with the European Union,” Reeves said at an event at \u200cthe London School of Economics.<\/p>\n
“I’m all \u2060up for doing deals with India and the U.S. and Korea. But none of them are going to be as big as what we can \u2060get to grow trade relations with Europe,” she said.<\/p>\n
Reeves said deeper integration would require further alignment with the EU on issues such as rules and standards “but I’m up for that.”<\/p>\n
Since leaving the EU in 2020, \u200bBritain has \u200bsought to lower some barriers to trade but it \u200bhas trod carefully, wary of angering \u200csupporters of the Brexit decision to leave the bloc in a 2016 referendum.<\/p>\n
However, Reeves and Starmer are also trying to show voters and restless Labour lawmakers that they can honour their promises to galvanise Britain’s sluggish economy.<\/p>\n
Reeves last year said Britain’s trading relationship with Europe was “arguably even more important” than its ties with the United States, due to the country’s proximity to the EU.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday she \u200calso said cooperation with European countries on defence spending \u200bwas vital, saying they could improve value for money by \u200bworking together in areas such as interoperability \u200band procurement.<\/p>\n
“Many European finance ministers and defence ministers are keen to seize \u200cthe opportunities there. And I hope that \u200bin the coming weeks there’s \u200bmore to say on that,” Reeves said.<\/p>\n
Starmer has previously said his government will consider applying to join a second possible multi-billion-euro European Union fund for defence projects.<\/p>\n
A British plan to \u200bjoin the original 150 billion \u200ceuro ($178.25 billion) SAFE fund broke down in November after the government refused to pay \u200ba financial contribution to join, representing a setback for the post-Brexit reset of relations.<\/p>\n
($1 = \u200b0.8415 euros)<\/p>\n
(Writing by William SchombergEditing by Gareth Jones)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By William Schomberg LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) – British finance minister Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday that she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,31610,2000,299,5187,14017,1699,71839,4884,807,619,28650,52163,16,15],"class_list":["post-757902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-defence-spending","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-countries","tag-european-union","tag-finance-minister","tag-great-britain","tag-keir-starmer","tag-rachel-reeves","tag-the-eu","tag-trade-barriers","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116053825661816154","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}