Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, told a meeting of European leaders in Bratislava that Mrs May had told him it was “quite likely” that Article 50 would be invoked “either January or February 2017”.
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Amid growing calls for more details on the Government’s Brexit strategy, Downing Street on Saturday poured cold water on claims Mrs May told one of Brussels’ most senior figures that she wanted to trigger the formal process to pull Britain out of the European Union early next year.
Discussions in Bratislava are not specifically about Brexit or the exit process (which has yet to formally begin) but will focus on the future of the European Union in the wake of the U.K.’s vote to leave, the root causes of dissatisfaction and fragmentation between member states over controversial issues like the migration crisis.
“Prime Minister May was very open and honest with me”.
Other than to rule out invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty this year, May has declined to publicly say when she may kick off the two years of divorce talks.
At an end of the first EU summit without the United Kingdom on Friday, Mr Fico said that he and other Central European leaders whose citizens make up much of the EU migrant population in Britain would not let those people become “second class citizens”.
However, he insisted that the remaining leaders would “protect the interests of the 27, not the leaving country” during negotiations, the Telegraph has reported.
Fico doubled down on the position voiced by many in Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the European Union that Britain should not be allowed restrictions on freedom of movement while staying part of the single market trading area.
“Britain knows this is an issue for us where there’s no room for compromise”, he added.
Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has said that his country, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland will unite to block any deal which compromises the freedom of movement of people.
In the document discussed by leaders yesterday, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker commits Brussels to a three-point plan for creating the army.
French President Francois Hollande, the other half of the EU’s “power couple” with Merkel, was equally blunt.
Years of economic and financial crisis have pushed up unemployment in many member states, while a spate of attacks by Islamist militants and a record influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa have unsettled voters, who are turning increasingly to populist, anti-EU parties.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the summit had failed to change European Union immigration policies that he called “self-destructive and naive”.
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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”.
