The United States also helped resolve a vexed dispute, said Mr. Vale de Almeida, one of Europe’s most experienced diplomats, who has also served as E.U. ambassador to the Washington and to the United Nations. President Biden, who values his Irish heritage, had made it clear that a negotiated solution was needed if there were to be a presidential visit to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended years of sectarian bloodshed.
“It played a role, the U.S.,” said Mr. Vale de Almeida, who is about to take up a visiting fellowship at Columbia University. “I think it was important that the U.S. was very clear that this situation should have no impact on the Good Friday Agreement and that we needed to find a solution.”
The new agreement draws a line under a period of almost open hostility between London and Brussels during which Mr. Johnson and his Brexit negotiator, David Frost, adopted combative tactics. The effect was felt sharply by Mr. Vale de Almeida, a Portuguese citizen, who opened the European Union’s first embassy in London once Britain had left three years ago — only to find that, in the fractious aftermath of Brexit, the red carpet was not being rolled out.
“It started in the worst possible way,” he said, recalling how Mr. Johnson’s government at first refused to give him full diplomatic privileges.
By a quirk of fate, Mr. Vale de Almeida and Mr. Johnson were already acquainted — as adversaries. Three decades earlier, Mr. Vale de Almeida was a media spokesman for the European Commission, and Mr. Johnson was a reporter in Brussels for The Daily Telegraph, writing articles, often plainly false, that pilloried the European Union.
Mr. Vale de Almeida insists there are no hard feelings, either for Mr. Johnson’s youthful writings about Brussels or for the snub inflicted on the E.U. ambassador. He said he respected Mr. Johnson’s intelligence and — perhaps a backhanded compliment to a former journalist — his “creativity.”
