Juncker said the split was “not an amicable divorce” – adding that it was never “a tight love affair anyway”.
Advertisement
No country has ever left the European Union before, so no one knows exactly how the process will play out.
Once Article 50 is invoked, though, British negotiators will have to begin the process of disentangling 50 years of agreements with its European Union partners numbering some 80,000 pages.
Australia is negotiating with the European Union on the possible terms of a free-trade agreement, but could open talks with Britain on a bilateral deal.
The historic vote, fought on the battlefronts of the economy and immigration, toppled Prime Minister David Cameron, pounded the sterling and led Moody’s to downgrade Britain’s credit rating outlook to “negative”.
“A second independence referendum is clearly an option that requires to be on the table”, she said after an emergency cabinet meeting, where ministers agreed to start drawing up legislation that could enable a second vote.
Separately, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the negotiations with Britain should not be conducted in such a way as to be seen as a deterrent to other countries, and that there was no hurry for London to trigger the process for leaving.
Scotland voted in 2014 to remain a part of the United Kingdom, but that decision was seen as being conditional on the United Kingdom staying in the EU.
Yesterday, he said he would leave it to his successor as Conservative party leader and premier to trigger Article 50 of the European Union treaty, which sets out a two-year process to quit the bloc.
Cameron, who announced he will resign from his role as UK Prime minister in the aftermath of the result, had declared no negotiations would happen before a new leader is installed in October.
Cameron’s Conservative Party rival Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who became the most recognisable face of the Leave camp, is now widely tipped to seek his job. She figures she has time on her side, given the closeness of the vote.
“I would like to get started immediately”.
As economists predicted, the leave vote is causing economic turmoil.
“The failure of the British government” has opened up “the possibility of the crumbling of Europe”, Macron said at a debate in Paris.
Top diplomats from France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg – the EU’s six founding nations – met in Berlin on Saturday for hastily arranged talks following the stunning vote to leave the political alliance. We will stand strong and uphold the EU’s core values of promoting peace and the well-being of its peoples.
France’s Jean-Marc Ayrault directly urged Cameron to go quickly, telling AFP: “A new prime minister must be designated, that will take a few days but there is a certain urgency”. Many observers doubt it can be done in the two-year timeframe. Negotiations with the European Union will begin under the new prime minister, he said, noting he or she will make the decision when to trigger Article 50 and start the formal and legal process of leaving the EU.
Advertisement
The signing of the Single European Act in 1987 mandated the creation of an internal market, “an area without frontiers in which the free movement of goods and persons, services and capital is ensured”. They all spoke of the need for a speedy renegotiation.
