EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier (R) welcomes British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn on July 13, 2017 in Brussels | Pool photo by Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images Jeremy Corbyn hails ‘informative’ but ‘frank’ meeting with Michel Barnier UK Labour leader said he had come to Brussels to find out ‘what the EU really wants’ from Brexit.

U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he had a "very informative, very frank and very useful" exchange with the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels Thursday.

After exchanging gifts — Corbyn gave Barnier an Arsenal football club shirt and a copy of his party's manifesto, Barnier handed Corbyn a poster of the Savoie region in France — the Labour leader said the pair discussed the "process" and the "situation" of Brexit, adding that he had left the more than two-hour meeting "very well informed."

Corbyn — who was accompanied by Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott — said he informed Barnier of "our respect for the result of the referendum," and expressed "our wish to maintain jobs in Britain" and an "effective economic relationship with Europe in the future."

"We have to make sure that our economy is strong, that jobs are maintained and to recognize the importance of our trade relationship with Europe," he said, adding "there has to be a lot of changes in Britain, including a fairness of investment across the whole of the U.K. We can no longer go on with these huge areas of regional imbalances across the U.K., these areas of unemployment."

Corbyn said he was not negotiating in Brussels on Britain's behalf but "forming an opinion on what the EU really wants in this." He said Barnier had told him the EU "wants very good relations with the U.K in the future."

A spokesperson for the European Commission said Barnier’s “doors are and remain wide open for anybody who wants to speak to him,” but he added that the meeting should not be interpreted as the EU trying to meddle in British politics.

The EU negotiator also met Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon Thursday morning and is set to meet Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones in the afternoon.

Sturgeon said her meeting with Barnier was “helpful” to build up a “mutual understanding between the Scottish government and the EU,” and she pressed her case against an “extreme Brexit.” Leaving the single market would, she said, “have potentially catastrophic consequences for jobs."