He revealed Prime Minister Theresa May had led him to expect, at their meeting last week in London, that this would “quite likely” be in January or February next year.
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But in the interview, Mr Fico said the European Union had shifted from a debate over mandatory quotas to a new principle of “flexible solidarity” over the migrant crisis.
Speaking at a summit in Bratislava of the 27 EU leaders without Britain, Mr Tusk said that the Union was “well prepared” and added that “we could even start the procedure tomorrow”.
However, Britain is wary of triggering Article 50 because this could weaken its leverage.
“We haven’t come to Bratislava to comfort each other”, Tusk said.
Tusk and 27 other leaders of Europe gathered without United Kingdom for an informal summit in Slovakian capital Bratislava.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU President, used the meeting on Saturday to reiterate that Britain can forget single market access if it refuses to accept the free movement of people to Britain.
Merkel repeated her warning that the European Union was in a “critical situation”, but her influence as leader of the EU’s biggest economy has been undermined by her unpopular decision to open Germany’s doors a year ago to almost a million refugees.
The Prime Minister went on to add that Europe did not mean everything for everyone: migration, taxation, relations with Russian Federation and Turkey all left different impacts on different member states.
However, at the final presser, journalists’ questions inspired Juncker, Tusk, and Fico to elaborate on the EU’s post-referendum relations with the UK.
EU President Donald Tusk said the talks – held in Bratislava Castle with a break for lunch on a cruise ship on the Danube – were “sober but not defeatist”.
Merkel said that “further efforts are needed to reach consensus on migration policy”, but denied that contentious issues were left out of the discussion.
Mr Fico said he wanted more steps on migration issues in the bloc’s new road map but that he was happy that border security was getting more attention and that a debate began on “flexible solidarity” allowing countries to offer what they can to tackle the migrant crisis.
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But if Britain’s government does go ahead with a Brexit, former European Commission head Herman van Rompuy says significant EU exit talks are unlikely to begin until the end of next year after Germany’s September elections have been settled. Those differences came to a fore last week when Luxembourg’s foreign minister called for Hungary to be kicked out of the European Union for its authoritarian stance towards migrants who have arrived on the continent, many fleeing war in the Middle East. Failure to hit that deadline would complicate elections to the European Parliament and the appointment of a new EU executive, the Commission, that year as well as hobble negotiations on a new seven-year EU budget.
