UK Edition
EU planning its own 'bateau de commerce' trade yacht modelled on Royal Yacht Britannia
European Union officials are working on secret plans for a new “bateau de commerce” to secure new post-Brexit trade agreements, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.
The new ship – dubbed “le trade yacht” - will ferry key European Commission figures to trade negotiations as the EU tries to rebuild its own ties with non-EU countries, particularly the Commonwealth, after Britain leaves.
Europa is modelled on the secret designs for the new Royal Yacht Britannia, which were developed by the Ministry of Defence after she was controversially decommissioned by Tony Blair’s government in 1997.
A share of the estimated £350million cost of the new EU trade yacht will be added to the £37billion Brexit bill that Britain must already pay to leave the EU, Brussels sources said.
News of the new EU yacht is likely to inflame relations among Brexiteers because Theresa May’s government is resisting pressure to commission a replacement for Britannia.
EU president Jean Claude Juncker and Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU trade commissioner, and other key EU bureaucrats are said to be enthusiastically supporting the new ship to boost trade with non-EU countries.
According to his biographer, Avril Poisson, Mr Juncker has been enviously hankering after a vessel since he visited HMY Britannia in 1987 while prime minister of Luxembourg.
Repeated bids to draw up a counterpart were thwarted, as officials explained the Grand Duchy is entirely landlocked.
At a late-night summit in 2012, prime minister David Cameron torpedoed similar plans for an EU boat as “an unbelievable joke that treated Britain like fools”.
“Now the Brits are gone, Europe will rule the waves,” said an EU source. “President Juncker is so pleased he has already had an admiral's uniform run up by his tailor. It has been his lifelong dream - and now thanks to Brexit, Europa will rule the waves."
The yacht’s blueprints were drawn up in secret by the Laffter Brothers shipyard in Hamburg, and work is set to start on April 1, just days after Britain formally leaves the EU on March 29.
A blueprint of the plans features 27 bedrooms for national leaders, the world’s longest floating bar, and a lifeboat dubbed ‘Article 50’ by officials.
Britannia is estimated by experts to have helped secure £3 billion of trade deals for the UK between 1991 and 1995.
Separately, UK companies are planning a major marketing blitz to take advantage of enthusiasm for leaving the EU in a year's time.
One entrepreneur claims to have to developed a fragrance called "Smell of Brexit" so Leave supporters can literally reek of quitting the EU.
The scent - available as an aftershave and a perfume - combines the best of the UK's national flowers - the English rose, the Scottish thistle, the Welsh leak and the Northern Irish flax - with other more prosaic smells associated with Brexit.
Charles Gadfly, the entrepreneur behind the new fragrance, said: "I added some personal touches including some of my own sweat - to emphasise David Davis' hard work in the Brexit process - and a few drops of French claret, to mark EU officials’ favourite tipple."
The scent has taken the past 21 months to develop - ironically the same length of time as the transition process, Mr Gadfly said.
Free samples are being sent to Theresa May, the Prime Minister, and David Davis, the Exiting the EU secretary, “to focus minds in the negotiations”, he added.
Did we catch you out? This story, like others published today April 1 by other newspapers and websites, is an April Fool's Day hoax.