UK chooses ambassador for EU divorce
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BRITAIN’S new EU ambassador is a veteran diplomat chosen to bring toughness and experience but also to calm civil servants restive over London’s cryptic Brexit strategy, former colleagues and experts said yesterday.
Tim Barrow, the man charged with ironing out the path to Brexit, has handled Britain’s rocky relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the past six years as the UK’s ambassador to Moscow.
He is also an old hand in the corridors of Brussels, having done two stints in the mission he now heads, and spent years in key Europe roles in the Foreign Office.
British civil servants are reportedly frustrated by a lack of clarity from Prime Minister Theresa May’s government, as she prepares to trigger two years of EU exit negotiations within the next three months.
Barrow, as London’s permanent representative to the European Union, will play a key role in thrashing out Britain’s future relations with the bloc.
Tom Fletcher, a former British ambassador to Lebanon and ex-foreign policy adviser to prime ministers, said: “It’s the toughest negotiation in our lifetimes and I think he is up to it.”
“I have seen him in Brussels. He knows the corridors, he knows the characters,” he told BBC radio.
Before becoming the ambassador to Russia, Barrow was at Britain’s EU embassy in Brussels as the UK representative to the bloc’s political and security committee and ambassador to the Western European Union from 2008 to 2011.
He replaces Ivan Rogers, who quit nine months early on Tuesday so that his successor could see through the whole divorce process. Rogers left amid claims he had been undermined by ministers who did not like what he was telling them from Brussels.
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