Brexit will be costly, leaders warn

EU won’t make it easy for U.K.

LONDON — Since Britain voted to leave the European Union, U.K. officials have had one message: Brexit means Brexit.

Now they have EU leaders’ reply: It’s going to hurt.

The prime minister of Malta, whose country is about to assume the EU presidency, is the latest to dash Britain’s hopes of an easy divorce, signaling that the 27 other nations will drive a hard bargain.

Joseph Muscat told the BBC that “there will not be a situation when the U.K. has a better deal than it has today.”

“In the U.K. it’s fair game to bash Brussels, and then you don’t need to be surprised that in Brussels they bash you back,” Muscat said in an interview broadcast last week. “So this is a bit of Catch-22. It won’t be a case whether one side gains, and the other side loses. We are all going to lose something.”

Malta, a former British colony, is usually one of the U.K.’s strongest supporters in Europe. The island nation is due to hold the EU’s rotating presidency for six months from Jan. 1 — a period that could coincide with the start of U.K. exit negotiations.

British Prime Minister Theresa May says she will trigger Article 50 of the EU’s key treaty, beginning two years of exit talks, by March 31. She and her ministers have refused to set out in advance the deal Britain will seek, saying that would undermine their bargaining position.

EU leaders have grown firm in insistence that Britain won’t get an easy ride.

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem has accused British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of “saying things that are intellectually impossible, politically unavailable.”

He referred to suggestions by Johnson and others that Britain might be able to stay in the EU’s single market for goods and services while imposing limits on immigration from the bloc.