This week, Mr Schulz pressed Theresa May to trigger Article 50 and start the exit talks as soon as possible, on a visit to Downing Street.
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Britain has so far been clear about what will not happen: Prime Minister Theresa May has repeated that the formal divorce notification will not be sent before the end of the year and that Britain will not get a bad deal.
UK’s foreign minister Boris Johnson in a rare hint of the government’s plans for Brexit told Sky News that the United Kingdom government is likely to trigger article 50 and begin the process of the country’s formal departure from the European Union early next year.
Asked today by EurActiv.com if “the lack of any contingency planning for Brexit by the British government ahead of the referendum, plus all three Brexit ministers being reprimanded, or clarified, by Downing Street on policy positions, meant that the Commision was confident it had a competent interlocutor for next year’s negotiations”, a spokesman for European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said, “We have a team in place…and we await Article 50”.
Sterling fell to a five-week low as British foreign secretary Boris Johnson boosted concern that Britain is heading for a swift exit from the EU.
Britain should be out of the EU by 2019 to avoid any overlap with European Parliament elections, Schulz said. This could see Britain leaving the single market and operate on World Trade Organization rules internationally, while also imposing strict curbs on immigration from the EU.
He also suggested Britain may not need the full two years of negotiation allowed under the Lisbon Treaty – suggesting he was in favour of a faster, so-called “hard Brexit”.
Mr Schulz also cautioned that many Leave campaigners tended to “underestimate the complexity and delay” in forging new trade relationships with the European Union and the rest of the world although he stressed that Brussels was not “on some punitive mission”.
He said Britain would benefit from greater free trade with the European Union as it was in the interest of European Union companies to give Britain, which now accounts for about 15 per cent of European Union gross domestic product, a good deal.
“I also see a clear majority in the European Parliament for insisting that the fundamental freedoms are inseparable, i.e.no freedom of movement for goods, capital and services, without free movement of persons”.
“And what we saw was a Government here in London expected a majority for staying in”.
He went on: “This hard Brexit or soft Brexit or no Brexit, that unknown quantity is why sterling is being sold”.
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He warned against the “false logic” of exiting all forms of European co-operation and against valuing “the risky purity of splendid isolation over the practical necessity of co-operation in the real world”.
