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Three EU ambassadors stationed in London publicly criticized British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt for comparing the EU to the Soviet Union.
Mr Hunt told the conservative party conference on Sunday that the EU was acting like the USSR in trying to prevent any member from leaving the bloc.
Diplomats said the comparison was false and insulting to those who had lived through years of Soviet rule.
But UKIP leader Nigel Farage said that Mr Hunt "used my language".
Relations between the UK and the EU are tense after European leaders publicly criticized Theresa May's cooperation plan after Brexit at a summit to be held in Austria last month.
British ministers accused the EU of failing to respect the UK after the Prime Minister's plans were ridiculed on social media at the Salzburg meeting.
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Today, Mr Hunt seems to have provoked a diplomatic quarrel after accusing the EU of seeking to punish the United Kingdom in order to "keep the club together".
"European dream"
In his Sunday speech, he recalled a visit to Latvia earlier this summer and the role that the UK and other countries played in helping to move from Soviet domination to a democracy and to a modern market economy.
"What happened to the trust and ideals of the European dream?" He asked. "The EU was created to protect freedom.It was the Soviet Union that prevented people from leaving."
In response, Baiba Braze, Latvian ambassador to the UK, said the comparison was flawed, with the Soviets "killing, deporting, exiling and imprisoning 100,000 people in Latvia after the illegal occupation in 1940" and ruined the life of three generations. The EU has brought prosperity, equality, growth, respect. "
His Estonian counterpart, Tiina Intelmann, also participated in the reviews by tweeting:
Swedish ambassador, Torbjorn Sohlstrom, said that the UK deservedly deserved to be respected, but that the remarks were disappointing, while MEP Guy Verhofstadt said that they were "offensive and scandalous".
The remarks also raised eyebrows among former British diplomats.
Lord Ricketts, who headed the Foreign Office between 2006 and 2010, said the only punishment that the UK would suffer from Brexit was "self-inflicted".
"This waste is unworthy of a British Foreign Secretary," he said. "The EU is not a Soviet-style prison, its legal order brought peace and prosperity after a century of war."
And his successor, Sir Simon Fraser, suggested that it was a "shocking judgment failure" of Mr. Hunt, who succeeded Boris Johnson in the role in July.
A spokesman for the European Commission added: "I would respectfully say that it would be in our interest, especially the Foreign Ministers, to open a history book from time to time."
