A series of meetings were held in Bratislava as the European Union gets to grip with the reality that discussions with Britain are going to happen in the near future, most likely at the beginning of 2017.
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European Council President Donald Tusk, said the British Prime Minister Theresa May had recently told him that might be in January or February 2017.
Merkel said France and Germany would ask the Council to pursue their proposals but added: “We want to work inclusively so all of the 27 member states should of course have the opportunity to take part and to decide on things together”.
Standing at his side, Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European commission, vowed there would be no compromise on free movement of workers.
He said there was no possibility of the United Kingdom gaining access to the single market without accepting the free movement of people.
Addressing reporters after the informal meeting of EU leaders in Bratislava, the Maltese Prime Minister said the European Union must not only take stock of its situation but come up with a way forward as soon as possible.
But he admitted Britain’s exit was a “sad moment” for Europe. Britain, which has voted to leave the bloc, was not invited to the gathering. The bloc will now pursue a new principle of “flexible solidarity”, he said, although it is not yet clear what that might mean in practice.
He also reiterated that talks with Britain can not begin without a formal notification by the British government. “At the end of the day I hope that we will be ready to prepare a road-map of the most important topics we would like to deal in the next 6 months”.
He called for European Union leaders to come to their senses and realise that discussions can not be with “blissful conviction that nothing is wrong, that everything was and is okay”.
Tusk said that high on the agenda was migration after some 1.5 million refugees entered Europe previous year alone.
One concrete step expected on Friday is agreeing a small European Union border guard force to help Bulgaria keep irregular migrants from coming over its Turkish frontier now that an European Union deal with Turkey has largely halted sea crossings to Greece.
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The EU’s eastern members have been at odds with older members, mainly Germany, over taking in a share of more than one million migrants who a year ago fled war and poverty in Middle Eastern and African countries to come to Europe.
