Emotional final week for British MEPs

Some will walk away with bitter regret. Others will march off with their flag held high. But British MEPs of every stripe face an emotional final week in Brussels.

Those who believed in the European project were defeated by what they see as the "blatant lies" of the eurosceptics.

Those who came to Brussels to undermine the European Union are triumphant and keen to celebrate Britain's "escape".

The leader of the Labour Party delegation, Richard Corbett, has been a member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 1996.

"You get many MEPs coming up to you, giving you hugs, saying very kind words, about what we've done, how much they will miss us," he told AFP.

Corbett was in a park behind the parliament's modern headquarters, sitting on the same bench where he gave his first interview, just next to an appropriately named museum.

"To come back here in a way to end it off is a very special moment. We're next to the House of European History and this is of course a historical moment," he said.

On the 65-year-old's scarf are the UK and EU flags, and the dates of the beginning and end of Britain's EU membership, like the headline of an obituary: "1973-2020".

Along with another 71 British members he will leave office on Friday, at midnight Brussels time, the moment of Brexit.

Is Corbett bitter?
"I'm not optimistic that the negotiations between the EU and the UK will go well over the next years. That's different. But at least we now know that we have a chance of bringing democracy home."
"Do we want to be like a small island, Little Britain, where we're just trying to be in the pocket of Donald Trump and the United States?