A first Commission posting, a familiar city

Jukka Salovaara, 58, the new EU ambassador to the UK, arrives as a career Finnish diplomat: a former permanent secretary at Finland's foreign ministry and one-time ambassador to the United Nations. The post is his first job with the European Commission but not his first in the UK - in the summer of 1996, as a young diplomat, he covered European affairs for Finland in London just as Tony Blair stood on the cusp of power at the onset of Cool Britannia.

• •Salovaara remembers the 1990s as optimistic: world trade was growing, interdependence was expected to provide security, and global norms and rules were strengthening.
• •In that era, he says, many believed globalisation would raise prosperity for everyone.
• •Salovaara recalls that the Labour government of that period came 'very close' to joining the euro.

His Smith Square office sits one floor above the room Margaret Thatcher used at Conservative Central Office; the same building drew visits from Nigel Farage in his years as an MEP. He sees his own task as that of a facilitator, testing both sides on what might fly and what will not work. While he will take no seat at the negotiating table, he intends to stay 'very close to it'.

Over and over, he says, people tell him the job boils down to mutual explanation between the two capitals.

The ball in the UK's court

Salovaara takes up the post while the government led by Andy Burnham works out how the UK's future relationship with the EU should look. Burnham has gone further than his predecessor Keir Starmer in saying that what exists now is not working, and he wants every option, including rejoining, examined before Labour draws up its next election manifesto.

Relations have moved forward step by step until now, Salovaara observes, but 'this prime minister wants to assess all the options'. He argues Europe should wait to learn what the UK wants rather than set out a collective EU opinion of its own. 'The ball is very much with the UK in terms of having this debate then looking at the options,' he says, and once Britain has debated and examined the choices, the EU will be ready to engage.

He calls the UK 'the European Union's first and foremost partner' and says that whenever the two sides have made agreements, it has always been to their mutual benefit.

What is on the table before the November summit

Burnham's first EU summit is pencilled in for November, and Salovaara names themes that should keep it worthwhile:

• •Food standards - Salovaara argues that common standards would remove the need for border checks: 'When we have common standards we don't need border checks'.
• •The stakes run high: nearly 60% of UK food exports go to the EU market, and 70% of UK food imports come from the EU.
• •Youth mobility - talks on a 'youth experience scheme' are still running over how many 18-to-30-year-olds could take part and what work and study rights they would enjoy. According to EU officials, the UK has initially offered 50,000 places a year, while the EU is pushing for 150,000.
• •Linking the UK and EU carbon emissions trading schemes, and security.

One question that will not be decided at the summit is how UK traders can avoid being caught up in the EU's plans against subsidised Chinese products flooding European markets.

Options beyond step by step

• •Further rungs on the regulatory staircase, as Salovaara lists them, include joining the EU single market or the customs union.
• •Other novel blueprints, still undefined, are evolving - among them the associate membership option being proposed for Canada.
• •A separate scheme associated with Alexandre Adam, chief adviser to Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, would let countries - including Balkans candidates in the EU accession queue - join without immediate full market access, with rights granted over time in return for commitments to democracy.

Salovaara also sees a shift in how countries outside the EU treat it. In the 1990s, European Economic Area countries such as Norway viewed the relationship purely in economic terms, he observes; now he points to Norway's integration into what the EU does with Ukraine as evidence of the change. 'Everyone is looking for a broader relationship with the EU,' he says.

Charles Grant, who heads the Centre for European Reform, has said he cannot envisage Europe wanting the UK back as a full member unless there is a political consensus to rejoin inside the UK. Salovaara agrees that very fundamental changes usually make sense only with strong consensus behind them, and says it is for the UK alone to decide whether that consensus must be proven through a further referendum.

The EU, for its part, will not have completed its own legislative proposals by the time of the November summit. Salovaara says the EU will be ready to engage once the UK has looked at its options.