European Union leaders met in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava on Friday at their first summit for decades without Britain after a shock British vote in June to leave the bloc, a subject which Mr Fico said had only been touched on at the meeting.
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Merkel said the bloc simply had to improve.
He said the Prime Minister had told him during a meeting in Downing Street that she is likely to get the process of Brexit under way in around six months.
“We need solutions for Europe and we are in a critical situation”, Merkel said as she arrived at the gathering.
His comments come a day after the EU’s first major meeting without the UK.
“It’s about the rights of ordinary people and workers, of those living in Europe, and so I can’t see any possibility of compromising on that very issue”.
The chairman of the European Union summit Donald Tusk said divorce negotiations with Britain should be held only after a notification from London and should be run in the interest of the remaining 27 countries of the bloc, rather than Britain’s.
The 27 leaders gathered in the Slovak capital without Britain on September 16 to launch a road map meant to be agreed at a summit in March next year that coincides with the 60th anniversary of the bloc’s founding Rome Treaty.
If this wasn’t tough enough for the new PM, she’s now facing threats from four European countries that they will kibosh any Brexit deal with the EU unless she guarantees the right of their citizens to work in Britain.
European Council president Donald Tusk revealed that Britain’s prime minister Theresa May told him the date of when she is likely to trigger Article 50 and therefore start the two-year negotiation process on how the United Kingdom will exit the European Union.
On the eve of an EU summit in Bratislava on Friday, European Council President Donald Tusk said that he and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker were like “one fist” and that was “no problem” between them – despite the two leaders offering diverging views of whether there should be, in Juncker’s view, “more Europe” and “more unity” or, as Tusk said, an honest look at the direction the EU is taking and the danger of alienating its citizens further.
Cracks in the union are evident everywhere.
The EU, he said, is ” determined to continue our cooperation with Turkey and the Western Balkans but also to establish migration pacts with African countries.to do everything possible to ensure internal security and fighting terrorism”.
At an end of the summit 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”.
Equally, the announcement is likely to cause consternation among European Union officials, who have repeatedly expressed a desire to see Britain go sooner rather than later.
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His views are shared by other Eastern European leaders.
