Donald Tusk let slip, at a summit in Bratislava, that Theresa May wants to begin the formal process to extract Britain from the European Union by February 2017.
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“After the vote in the United Kingdom the only thing that makes sense is to have a sober and brutally honest assessment of the situation”, European Council President Donald Tusk told reporters in Bratislava on the eve of the meeting.
The EU leaders will not formally discuss Brexit negotiations, with the rest of Europe impatiently waiting for frozen-out British Prime Minister Theresa May to trigger the two-year divorce process.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Friday that the EU faces a “critical situation”, as European leaders sought to plot the bloc’s post-Brexit future at a summit without Britain.
Despite the fact that the Bratislava summit, which ended today (16 September), is reported to have focused on security issues, at the final presser, Council President Donald Tusk, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and Slovak Premier Robert Fico, who hosted the meeting, issued stern messages to the UK. “We are not going to back out of our commitment to keeping Europe secure, but we don’t want to see unnecessary bureaucracy at the European Union level when we have got it in Nato”.
The scale of disagreement was made clear at the culmination of the summit, when the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi refused to share a platform with Mrs Merkel and the French President Francois Hollande following disputes over economic and immigration policies.
EU officials on Friday also underlined that there could be no granting Britain access to the EU’s single market unless London accepts the freedom of movement of workers that lies at the heart of European Union accords. But European leaders are divided, their voters sceptical.
The 28 leaders, not including Prime Minister Theresa May, committed to have a clear roadmap of the way forward after Britain’s exit by late March.
But the leaders did agree to have a clear roadmap of the way ahead and some practical results when they meet in late March to mark the 60th anniversary of the European Union founding Treaty of Rome in the Italian capital.
In particular, leaders tried to find common ground on the best way to deal with the numbers of migrants coming into Europe, and how to deal with the after effects of several years of economic crisis.
According to European Council President Donald Tusk the country could trigger talks by February next year. “We decided that together we have to deal with the migration issue, while respecting the right to asylum”.
At a press conference after the summit, Fico hailed the summit as a success.
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Second lieutenant Czernicki said: “The aim of our visit is to establish co-operation with the local Polish community, and to make it easier for them to report various incidents to the police”.
