British diplomats have been trying to sound out European officials to find out what demands would be feasible in Brexit talks, the FT says, but the EU is sticking to its guns, saying it will not negotiate, even informally, until Article 50 is triggered.
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Herman Van Rompuy, who led the EU’s executive branch from 2009 to 2014, said Britain had already drifted to the periphery of European affairs because of its multitude of opt-outs on major issues.
Van Rompuy, who described the Brexit vote as a “political amputation of the first degree”, said the United Kingdom had “not many friends” among the other 27 member states and the negotiation would be hard.
Mr. Van Rompuy also weighed in on this issue on Thursday, claiming that if the United Kingdom wants to retain it’s single market access, it must also accept the key European Union principle of the freedom of movement of people. “Of course, we want an agreement which represents some kind of mutual benefit”, he added.
“Time pressure would have negative consequences for the quality of the negotiation result”, Hardt said, adding that many politicians shared his personal wish for Britain to indefinitely postpone triggering article 50.
“There are huge economic interests, but there are also red lines”.
Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip who was largely responsible for former Prime Minister David Cameron calling a referendum on the country’s membership of the European Union, said on Wednesday he expected Article 50 to be triggered in January.
“Britain had not many friends any more”.
He denied leaders wanted to “punish” the United Kingdom for leaving, but said there was a desire not to encourage other countries to follow suit. “I saw this clearly when I was in office when we had to vote on the candidacy of Jean-Claude Juncker [the current EU Commission President]”, he told BBC Radio 4 on Thursday.
Since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May has said it again and again: “Brexit means Brexit”.
EU leaders are now gathering to meet in a summit in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, without the United Kingdom, to discuss the implication of the Brexit vote and the union’s future.
Despite the mantra, though, it’s far from clear what a British exit from the bloc will look like.
“The world is getting bigger”. But he insisted “the European project continues”, and urged the U.K.to make its formal request to leave as quickly as possible.
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European Council president Donald Tusk told reporters at the Bratislava summit on Friday that United Kingdom prime minister Theresa May told him that ” it was nearly impossible to trigger article 50 this year but it’s quite likely that they will be ready, maybe in January, maybe in February, next year”. Negotiations are then supposed to take two years, but could conceivably be extended.
