well let's go live to Brussels on the program there Pierre banaz is standing by for us Pierre look um Michelle barer is somebody who's had two major European roles brexit negotiator for the EU and the head of the EU commission tell us then about his long career as a sort of European Statesman he was in a way uh the longest serving European commissioner because he's had three uh European uh careers three different ones actually because uh he was first nominated as the uh uh French commissioner in 99 when there were two Commissioners were countries by by country at that time he was commissioner for regional policy uh which was not uh the main point of his uh five-year term the main point the main focus of what he did then was to sit in the convent convention for the future of Europe the convention that gave the Constitutional treaty which was rejected by the Dutch and the French in in ' 05 uh then he g g he went back to France in order to be a minister uh in Paris and came back for a second term of commissioner where he was nominated at the um Common Market Comm as the common market commissioner and that's where his political uh commitment really uh gave all its uh uh all its measure and he was uh the one who pushed for a very strong reform of the European common market and that was his uh the the second leg of his European Voyage if you want because after that he came back because he was nominated by Jean Claude junker as Mr brexit the one who negotiated uh the uh exit of the United Kingdom indeed and that was a thorny long difficult job that he had as the brexit negotiation negotiator what was B's reputation in that period well he's uh that's where he gave his full measure if you want uh first he started out by uh learning language and something which he had never uh bothered to do before uh he learned English in a few years uh at the start of his stint as a brexit negotiator uh that started out uh quite well for him because he did it the old politicians way that is he went throughout Europe talking to uh fishermen to uh agricultures farmers and so on in order to be able to have the full picture and he was able to talk uh with uh Downing Street he was able to talk with the negotiators in front of him even though from the British side they changed quite a lot and and he managed to uh find a way to have this uh treaty these exit treaty signed and to follow it up afterwards when the United Kingdom came out and he was rather respected from the other side of the channel what the Brussels they call the wrong side of the channel nowadays uh and he was quite respected in uh Europe as well because he's a hard worker that was his main reputation here during this tint as a negotiator