‘JUST LEAVE NOW’ TOP EU OFFICIALS TURN THE SCREW
SENIOR EU officials have taken a hard line on the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, calling on them to leave ‘as soon as possible, however painful that process might be’.
President of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, European Commission President, Jean Claude Juncker and Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte said there could be ‘no renogotiation’ after the historic decision.
In a joint statement on Friday, the officials said: ‘We now expect the United Kingdom government to give effect to this decision of the
‘Uncertainty is not what we need’
British people as soon as possible, however painful that process may be. Any delay would unnecessarily prolong uncertainty.
‘We have rules to deal with this in an orderly way. Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union sets out the procedure to be followed if a Member State decides to leave... We stand ready to launch negotiations swiftly with the United Kingdom regarding the terms and conditions of its withdrawal.’
After emergency talks in Brussels, the four said that they regretted, but respected Britain’s decision.
Meanwhile, Martin Schulz told media that EU lawyers were currently studying whether it was possible to speed up the triggering of Article 50 – the untested procedure for leaving the union.
As the EU’s institutions scrambled to respond to the body-blow of Britain’s exit, Schulz said uncertainty was ‘the opposite of what we need’, adding that it was difficult to accept that ‘a whole conti- nent is taken hostage because of an internal fight in the Tory party.
He added: ‘I doubt it is only in the hands of the government of the United Kingdom...we have to take note of this unilateral declaration that they want to wait until October – but that must not be the last word.’
With anti-European sentiment on the rise across the continent, national governments outside Europe’s capital sought urgently to prevent any contagion from the UK vote, urging swift reforms to the 60-year-old bloc. Calls for similar referendums were made in France, the Netherlands and in Sweden.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said in his resignation speech on Friday morning that it would be up to his successor – expected to be appointed before the Conservative Party conference in October – to trigger Article 50. Once that is done, the clock starts running on two years of negotiations.
Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London and a leading Leave campaigner, said there should be ‘no haste’ in the preparations for the exit of Britain, the first sovereign country to vote to leave the union. In Berlin, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel said the EU should not draw ‘quick and simple conclusions’ that might create new and deeper divisions.
The Handelsblatt newspaper said a leaked eight-page emergency Brexit plan suggested the German government should push for an ‘associative status’ for Britain after two years of ‘difficult divorce negotiations’. The document indicated that Germany would drive a hard bargain to ‘avoid offering false incentives for other member states when settling on new arrangements’. Specifically, the paper
‘We must avoid false incentives’
advocates ‘no automatic access to the single market’.
Speaking in Paris, the French president, François Hollande, said he ‘profoundly regretted’ the vote but that the EU now had to make changes. In a brief televised statement, Hollande said the vote would put Europe to the test: ‘To move forward, Europe cannot act as before’.