Brussels bureaucrats are drawing up emergency Brexit plans for British cats, dogs and ferrets after Jean-Claude Juncker took a personal interest in how “no deal” could damage the EU’s pet passport scheme.

About a quarter of a million British pets travel to the continent every year using the scheme, which give the animals a ‘passport’ of good health so they don’t have to go into quarantine. However, if Britain was to crash out of the European Union without a deal, it would also fall out of the scheme and those cats, dogs and ferrets could face being caged in foreign pounds or simply turned away at the border.

“President Juncker has personally mentioned the issue several times. It is something that is very close to his heart. We are not only for the free movement of people but for the free movement of pets,” Mina Andreeva, the deputy chief spokeswoman of the European Commission told The Telegraph in Brussels on Friday.