"You are at home here and it will never be 'goodbye'", European Parliament President David Sassoli assured the ten British Socialist MEPs and their cabinet members at a ceremony organised in their honour by the S&D Group on Wednesday 29 January.
Not an ‘adieu’, only an ‘au revoir’. This was the motto of this ceremony, which was taken up with great emotion by the various speakers.
"We are not ruling out a return to the EU one day," said the leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party, Richard Corbett, who served for almost 20 years as an MEP.
"When we see that the promises of the 'Leave' campaign are struggling to materialise, that Brexit has not worked, it will be time to come back", he added.
European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans, for his part, said he was "comforted" by the fact that his children and grandchildren would see "the day when the UK chooses to rejoin the EU".
The President of the Party of European Socialists (PES), Sergei Stanishev, concluded his speech with an assured "you will come back".
All also stressed the need to maintain strong links with their Socialist colleagues across the Channel and with the UK more widely. "Whether some people like it or not, we are a very interdependent group of neighbouring countries," Corbett said.
The Chair of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, Spanish MEP Iratxe García Pérez, for her part, said the European Union still needed a United Kingdom that shares and defends its values.
Mr Timmermans, speaking on behalf of the European Commission, declared, in addition, his respecting the UK's decision to leave the EU.
He pledged to "negotiate in good faith" future EU-UK relations "with the interests of British and European citizens in mind, so that this divorce is acceptable to all". (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki - intern)