Merkel vows to keep EU together after Britain’s vote

and not before — either formally or informally,” she said.

She made clear that Britain could not expect full access to the EU’s common market without accepting its conditions, including the free movement of people. Immigration was the crux of the often ugly debate that accompanied the so-called Brexit campaign.

“There must be and will be a noticeable difference between whether a country wants to be a member of the European Union family or not,” Merkel said.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, denounced the nature of the debate within Britain, where he has often been a punching bag for the tabloids.

“I am accused of being undemocratic, as a faceless bureaucrat, as some kind of robot,” he said. “That’s the way I’m portrayed in the United Kingdom. I respect what the British people have said. But I think we’ve got to see some consequences. I don’t think we should see any shadowboxing or catand-mouse games. We need to know — and this is pure common sense — that new relations are beginning with the United Kingdom.”

He said there would be no “secret negotiations” with British officials, and he cautioned anti-European parties throughout the Continent against celebration.

Juncker vowed that “the European dream will continue” and insisted that “this is not the time to turn inward.”

At a meeting of the European Parliament, anti-European lawmakers gloated over the British referendum, saying that it was a deserved comeuppance for a European Union whose leaders they have described as elite and out-of-touch.

“You as a political project are in denial,” Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-European, anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party and a longtime member of the European Parliament, told fellow lawmakers, citing the problems in the eurozone and the refugee crisis. “But the biggest problem you’ve got — and the reason, the main reason, the United Kingdom voted the way that it did — is that you have, by stealth, by deception, without ever telling the truth to the British or the rest of the peoples of Europe, you have imposed upon them a political union.”

He added personal insult to his critique. “Virtually none of you have done a proper job in your lives,” he said, as the groans and jeers continued. “Or worked in business or worked in trade or indeed ever created a job.”

“Isn’t it funny,” Farage said. “When I came here 17 years ago and said I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me. Well, you’re not laughing now.”

As the chamber filled with murmurs of disapproval, Farage continued, “Even no deal is better for the United Kingdom than the current, rotten deal that we’ve got.”

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing National Front in France and also a member of the European Parliament, joined Farage in deriding the bloc.

“The vote by our British friends in favor of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union is by far the most important historic event that our continent has witnessed since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” she said. “To those who never ceased to proclaim that the European Union was irreversible, the British people have provided a biting refutation. It is a resounding victory for democracy; it is a slap to the supporters of a European system that is increasingly based on fear, blackmail, and lies.”

She added: “The British people have just committed the ultimate sacrilege. They have shattered the chains that bound them to the European Union. To the European Union propagandists who are supposedly on the left, in the center or on the right, go ahead, put away your sulking faces, put away your furious speeches and rejoice instead for the liberation of the people.”