Boris Johnson’s election as Conservative leader has been greeted in Brussels with a rejection of the incoming British prime minister’s Brexit demands and an ominous warning by the newly appointed European commission president about the “challenging times ahead”.

Ursula von der Leyen, who will replace Jean-Claude Juncker on 1 November, said both sides had a “duty” to deliver a deal as she offered her congratulations to Johnson on his victory.

“There are many difficult issues we will tackle together,” she said. “It is important to build up a strong working relationship because we have a duty to deliver something which is good for the people in Europe and the United Kingdom.”

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, tweeted that he wanted to work “constructively” with Johnson on the basis that both sides were committed to facilitating “the ratification of the withdrawal agreement”, the deal struck by Theresa May that the new Conservative leader has repeatedly described as dead.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he wanted “very much to work with [Johnson] as quickly as possible” and would call him “when he is officially prime minister”.

But in an indication of the political baggage that Johnson will bring into Downing Street, EU officials felt free to take potshots in the hours immediately before the announcement of his election by the Conservative party membership.

One eastern European commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, likened Johnson’s “unrealistic promises” to those of the former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, whose empty rhetoric was said to have ushered in the authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin.

The Lithuanian health commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, wrote in a blogpost published on the European commission website: “It is a different Boris, of course, but there was something in the way of doing politics that was similar: many unrealistic promises, ignoring economic rationales and rational decisions. Read more

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