Jean-Claude Juncker had prevaricated when he was first asked to Downing Street for dinner. The prime minister had already announced a general election when the surprise invite came from Theresa May, and he wasn’t sure whether it would be appropriate to turn up in London in the midst of a political campaign.

But Juncker reasoned to himself that as European commission president it was his responsibility to deal even-handedly with all 28 member states, and he would after all soon be attending a special summit in Brussels with the other 27, to which May had not been invited.

And so he came to dinner. The prime minister may come to conclude that a snub to her RSVP would have been preferable.



The meeting last Wednesday started with a kiss on the cheek, gratefully immortalised by the photographers on Downing Street’s pavement. It ended with a withering putdown: “I’m leaving Downing Street 10 times more sceptical than I was before,” Juncker told his host.

It is said that the talks started pleasantly enough. During half of an hour of chit-chat in an anteroom, before taking their place at the dinner table, May told Juncker that she didn’t want just to talk Brexit during the evening but there were other matters of world affairs to discuss. “Like what?”, Juncker asked.

In fact, little else seemed to be on the prime minister’s mind. Juncker did have a topic to raise though, and the issue at hand may just explain some of the current iciness between the two leaders.

That very morning the EU should have been shuffling around its money to deal with issues such as the migration crisis, which could not have been expected a few years ago when the bloc’s budget had been set.

But on Monday morning Juncker had been made aware of an email from the UK’s permanent representative in Brussels explaining that because a general election had been announced, the British government couldn’t give its support to any changes in how the EU was going to spend its cash.

Juncker smelled mischief – maybe it was a way to show the EU what trouble Britain could cause if it didn’t get its way? “What on earth is all this supposed to mean?” he is said to have asked May.

Perhaps you won’t be able to talk about Brexit then, he queried, when May explained the rules of purdah, under which governments in an election are to avoid binding the hands of the next administration. But Brexit was very much on her agenda, and when they came to sit down for dinner, it wasn’t just May and Juncker who broke bread, but also the Brexit secretary, David Davis, the commission president’s head of cabinet, Martin Selmayr, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and his deputy, Sabine Weyand.

The conversation was never to get heated, and it was later to be described as “friendly”; but it most certainly became strained. Not least by Davis’s attempt at an ice-breaker, which turned out to be him boasting about his past success in arguing against May’s proposed surveillance laws in the European court of justice.

The EU delegation are said to have wondered whether Davis might still be in his post following the general election. However, it was the substance of the talks that were to cause Juncker the most unease. And it was Juncker’s despair that got to his colleagues. This was the man who through the trickiest of negotiations had always seen a path through. But when presented with May’s insistence that EU citizens in the UK would be treated in the future like any other foreign national, that trade talks needed to start before the issue of Britain’s divorce bill was settled or her claim that technically the UK owed nothing at all to the union, his lack of optimism for the future became clear.

“Theresa May started by stating that the UK wanted to discuss first future arrangements, then article 50 stuff,” one source with knowledge of the dinner said. “It felt to the EU side like she does not live on planet Mars but rather in a galaxy very far away.”



She was “deluded” and appeared to be “living in a parallel universe”, Juncker told the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in a phone call said to have taken place just moments after the delegation left Downing Street.

The next morning, the chancellor stood up in the Bundestag to lay out Germany’s belief in the phased approach – agreement on citizens rights, the divorce bill and the border on the island of Ireland before talks on trade – before adding: “Dear colleagues perhaps you think this is obvious but I am afraid it has to be made very clear. I have the feeling that some in Great Britain have illusions about this. But that’s a waste of time.”

Juncker will hope that the chancellor’s words made more of an impact than his.