The newly appointed British foreign minister and pro-Brexit gadfly has arrived in Brussels for his first meeting with his EU counterparts. Topping the agenda will be chaos in Turkey, the attack in Nice, Syria and Libya.
Image: Reuters/F. Lenoir
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Monday's gathering in Brussels opened with a breakfast attended by US Secretary of State John Kerry and marks Johnson's foray onto the diplomatic scene after his appointment last week.
It will also be a homecoming of sorts for the former London mayor, who lived in Brussels as a journalist in the 1990s and made a name for himself for writing salacious anti-EU stories that helped stoke Euroskepticism in Britain.
But Monday's talks are expected to focus on the response to the deadly Bastille Day truck attack in Nice and relations with Turkey after a failed military coup and its chaotic aftermath.
European foreign ministers will likely be sizing up the diplomatic credentials of gaffe-prone Johnson, who is well-known for his quips mocking foreign leaders and who once famously compared the EU's ambitions for closer integration to those of Hitler.
The outspoken former London mayor told reporters that he'll be delivering a conciliatory tone in his meetings.
"The message I'll be taking to our friends in the council is that we have to give effect to the will of the people and leave the European Union but that in no sense means that we are leaving Europe," Johnson told reporters on arrival at an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels. "We are not going to be in any way abandoning our leading role in European cooperation and participation of all kinds."
Criticism, praise for a divisive figure
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has gone on record to say that Johnson "lied a lot" during the Brexit referendum campaign in which UK voters narrowly voted to exit the EU.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto praised Britain's decision to appoint a man "with fresh ideas."
The UK exit itself will not be on the agenda. EU leaders are adamant they will not be drawn into negotiations until London invokes Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which gives Britain precisely two years to negotiate its exit.
Monday's agenda also includes EU-China ties, managing migration and relations with African countries.
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Image: Getty Images/D. Kitwood
Brexit club
The pro-Brexit campaigner will now be making frequent appearances in Brussels. The euroskeptic wasn't always so adverse to European integration, whatever his EU opinions. In 1997, he said: "I'm rather pro-European ... I certainly want a European community where one can go off and scoff croissants, drink delicious coffee, learn foreign languages and generally make love to foreign women."
Image: Getty Images/B. Pruchnie
'Crass and tasteless'
Guests at a gay rights event in 2013 walked out in disgust after Johnson said the following about gay marriage: "I’m delighted that as of this autumn any young man will be able to take his chum up the Arsenal ... and marry him." Labour's Angela Eagle, the first female MP to come out while in office, said that Johnson's "crass and tasteless remarks" only served to undermine the gay community.
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Hitler jokes? Nein, danke
Earlier this summer Johnson struck again, comparing the EU's aims to Hitler's. Speaking to UK newspaper "The Telegraph," Johnson said European history had seen repeated attempts to rediscover the "golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans." "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods," he said.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/S. Rousseau
'Special relationship'
Born in New York, Johnson has upset the "special relationship" with the US more than once. In April, Johnson faced huge criticism after recounting the story of a bust of Winston Churchill being moved from the White House to the British Embassy. In the British tabloid "The Sun," Johnson asked whether the move was "a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British Empire."
Image: Getty Images/D. Kitwood
Only one laughing
But Johnson is no stranger to making derogatory comments. In his 2002 column, he described how the Queen had "come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies." Commenting on then-Prime Minister Tony Blair's trip to Congo, Johnson wrote how "the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief."
Image: Getty Images/B. Pruchnie
Woes with the West Bank
In November last year, Palestinian authorities canceled Johnson's visit after he said a boycott of Israeli goods was "completely crazy" and supported by "corduroy-jacketed, snaggle-toothed, lefty academics in the UK." Officials said Johnson's comments risked creating protests if he visited the West Bank, and accused him of adopting a "misinformed and disrespectful" pro-Israeli stance.
Image: Reuters/P. Nicholls
Bull in a china shop
In 2008, Johnson even managed to offend his hosts at the ceremonial passing of the Olympic flag from Beijing to London. "I say this respectfully to our Chinese hosts, who have excelled so magnificently at Ping-pong," Johnson said. "Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century and it was called Wiff-waff!"
Image: Getty Images/C. Brunskill
No Shakespeare
Johnson won a £1,000 prize in May for penning a poem about Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he referred to the Turkish prime minister as a "wankerer," rhyming with the Turkish capital, Ankara - a far cry from Johnson arguing that Turkey should join the EU in 2006. The competition was launched after Erdogan sued German comedian Jan Böhmermann, whose poem accused him of having sex with a goat.
