LONDON — The United Kingdom would need to reapply for European Union membership on standard terms if it sought to rejoin the bloc, European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho said at a press briefing ahead of the next EU summit. Pinho declined to comment on potential negotiating terms.

"There are discussions on closer cooperation on a number of areas. That is where we are and that is also what we are doing, precisely in preparation of the next summit, rather than speculating about big, new or renewed issues," Pinho said.

During its 47 years of EU membership, the UK had opt-outs from the single currency and the Schengen zone, received a rebate on EU budget payments, and held an agenda-setting role. Georg Riekeles, a former adviser on the EU's Brexit taskforce and associate director at the European Policy Centre, said any return would not replicate those arrangements.

"There is a strategic need for the EU and the UK to work together, but I don't think there would be an appetite for opening up new decades of British exceptionalism," Riekeles said. "The price of re-entry would be membership on normal terms."

Riekeles said the bloc would require evidence of a settled shift in British politics before entertaining an application. "The EU would need to see a durable national consensus that the UK has really changed its mind," he said. He also said, "The world of Brexit is gone," and that the EU and the UK are part of the same strategic space.

Sandro Gozi, an MEP and chair of the European Parliament's delegation to the EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly, predicted that EU member states would welcome a British application to rejoin despite the uncertainty of a possible Nigel Farage premiership. "It is clear that the tailor-made suit is gone, and it is clear that the negotiation of the UK should tackle all the issues which are foreseen for any candidate," Gozi said.

Gozi said Brexit "has been a major disaster for the UK, but it has also been a loss for the EU." He added: "If in a moment of such a huge global turmoil, the UK decided to ask to rejoin the EU, I think that for our political model it would be a great victory."