After meeting Mr Cameron on Tuesday EU leaders expressed some understanding for his predicament, but European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker stressed that Britain can not “meditate for months”.
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Merkel dismissed suggestions that Cameron’s successor might not start the formal European Union withdrawal process because of the financial turmoil prompted by the vote and wide confusion about how to extract a country from the EU.
Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union should be orderly and there will be no negotiations until the United Kingdom formally notifies its intention, European Council President Donald Tusk after an informal meeting of EU27 leaders on Wednesday.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite says Europe must start listening to its citizens on issues like immigration and economic growth.
“That will endure. The EU will remain one of our indispensable partners”.
Some in Brussels are concerned that giving Britain favourable divorce terms will spark a domino effect of others leaving the union, set up six decades ago to foster peace on the continent after World War II.
The president said he had spoken to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and that her interest was making sure Britain’s exit worked, not retribution.
In addition to the fallout of the referendum, European leaders also discussed and took important decisions on the single market, the digital market, the capital markets union, on stemming irregular migration and on closer cooperation with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon met European Parliament President Martin Schulz in Brussels yesterday and was due to meet the leader of the EU executive, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, later.
European Union leaders called for an orderly British withdrawal from the bloc to minimize instability as they pledged to learn lessons from the U.K.’s political quake and do better at serving their citizens.
Financial markets have largely stabilized since the Brexit vote last week.
The leaders emerged insisting that the “four freedoms” central to European unity are indivisible: the free movement of people, services, goods and finances. Central European nations led by Hungary refuse to accept imposed EU refugee quotas, and countries further north have all tightened border controls in response to the arrival of more than 1 million migrants previous year.
“This is a way of putting pressure on London to trigger the exit clause”, a senior official in one European Union government said of European Union efforts to bounce London to the negotiating table while Cameron has insisted only his successor will set the clock ticking on a two-year deadline to withdrawal.
Mr Tusk insisted he and his fellow top eurocrat had given Mr Cameron a pre-referendum renegotiation deal that was “the maximum – more than maximum – of what was possible” within the terms of the European Union treaties and what member states could accept. “I think we need to think about that, Europe needs to think about that”.
Markets plunged after the result of the referendum was known last week.
Vodafone, one of Britain’s biggest companies, will consider moving its group headquarters because of the vote.
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London and Brussels will negotiate on how to deal with the vote and the decision to trigger a British exit may only be made by “next cabinet” and “next prime minister”, he said. “This was a very clear message which I believe Prime Minister Cameron will take back to London”, he added.
