No, the EU hasn't set up a UK harmonisation office in Brussels to help undo Brexit

False claims are spreading connected societal media that the European Council has established a UK Office of Strategic Alignment successful Brussels to bring the state backmost into the EU.

One station says the bureau has been acceptable up successful the "main EU building" and implies that Brexit volition soon beryllium over, portion different says it shows the EU wants to determination connected "graciously" and urges Brits not to discarded the opportunity.

However, unluckily for immoderate Remainers oregon Re-joiners, this isn't the case.

A spokesperson for the European Council described it arsenic a "typical misinformation case", arsenic nary specified bureau has been acceptable up.

They said that the Working Party connected the United Kingdom, the Council assemblage liable for managing post-Brexit relations with the UK, had besides said the claims were inaccurate.

However, it is existent that the UK is trying to deepen its ties with the EU, astir 10 years aft a referendum that yet led to the country's departure from the bloc and successive Conservative authorities measures to enactment adjacent much region betwixt them.

Euronews' fact-checking team, The Cube, besides reached retired to the UK's Mission to the EU, which pointed america to a code that Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave connected 1 April this year, wherever helium outlined his government's tendency to determination person to the continent.

"It is progressively wide that, arsenic the satellite continues down this volatile path, our semipermanent nationalist involvement requires person concern with our allies successful Europe and with the European Union," the UK premier curate said portion outlining his country's effect to the warfare successful Iran.

"Now, we person made advancement connected this beforehand connected agriculture, electricity, emissions, trading and more. But arsenic the chancellor [Rachel Reeves] has rightly pointed out, Brexit did heavy harm to our system and the opportunities to fortify our information and chopped the outgo of surviving are simply excessively large to ignore."

"So successful the coming weeks, we volition denote a caller acme with our EU partners," Starmer continued. "And I tin archer you that astatine that summit, the UK volition not conscionable ratify existing commitments made astatine past year's summit. We privation to beryllium much ambitious: person economical cooperation, person information cooperation, a concern that recognises our shared values, our shared involvement and our shared future."

The astir caller investigation from the UK's fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), states that the semipermanent interaction of Brexit remains a important resistance connected the UK economy. It estimates that it volition trim the UK's imaginable GDP by 4% successful the agelong tally (by the aboriginal 2030s) compared to what it would person been had London remained with Brussels.

The 4% is driven chiefly by a diminution successful productivity, with commercialized barriers stifling contention and preventing the UK from specialising successful its astir businesslike industries, according to the OBR.

Other figures from British deliberation vessel the Centre for European Reform enactment the economical nonaccomplishment of Brexit astatine astir £130 cardinal (€149 billion), and US probe organisation the National Bureau of Economic Research says that, by 2025, the UK's departure from the EU had chopped GDP by 6% to 8% since 2016.

How has the UK moved person to Brussels truthful far?

The Labour government, which came into powerfulness successful 2024, promised to "reset" the UK's narration with Europe, and it's already taken immoderate factual steps to bash so, including agreeing to rejoin the Erasmus+ speech scheme.

The 2 sides person besides launched a Security and Defence Partnership and are moving connected deals connected sanitary and phytosanitary standards and the communal designation of nonrecreational qualifications, among different steps.

Most recently, British paper The Guardian reported that UK authorities ministers are preparing authorities that could spot the state follow EU azygous marketplace rules without a ballot by parliament, if the authorities decides it's successful the nationalist interest.

Research from past year by Brussels-based consultancy Frontier Economics showed that deeper alignment successful goods and services could turn the UK's GDP by betwixt 1.7% and 2.2%.

With the adjacent UK-EU acme scheduled for summertime this year, it remains to beryllium seen precisely however the 2 sides volition align further, but there's nary uncertainty relations betwixt the 2 are present deepening alternatively than distancing.