‘EU must reinvent itself for UK to rejoin’

Bloomberg

The European Union must reconstruct itself to protect its economies from euro-area contagion and attract the UK back after Brexit, investor George Soros said.
“The economic case for remaining a member of the EU is strong, but it will take time for it to sink in,” Soros said in a speech in Paris on Tuesday. “During that time the EU needs to transform itself into an association that countries like Britain would want to join.”
The UK’s 2016 referendum to leave the EU has highlighted discontent with the bloc in other countries, several of which have voted for euroskeptic parties in large numbers, most recently in Italy. While the other 27 EU governments have been able to present a united front in negotiations with the UK over its divorce, some disagree with EU policies more generally, from migration to economic reform.
Soros, who warned that the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc it joined in 1973 is “immensely damaging” and “harmful to both sides,” said the EU needed to fix the fragile architecture of the 19-member euro area and make sure that its weaknesses don’t destroy the wider EU.
The EU has become “an organisation in which the euro-zone constitutes the inner core and the other members are relegated to an inferior position,” he said.
Soros is backing a pressure group in Britain called Best for Britain, which is campaigning for a parliamentary vote in
the UK with the option of remaining in the EU. He said a manifesto would be published in the coming days.