Frank-Walter Steinmeier was meeting with top diplomats from the EU’s five other founding nations in Berlin for hastily arranged talks following Britain’s stunning vote Thursday to leave the union.
Advertisement
A heat map showing where the signatures come from showed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the areas that voted to remain in the European Union had the most people signing the petition.
Signatories to the petition appeared to be mostly in Edinburgh and London, both of which voted heavily in favour of “Remain”.
The petition will run for six months, as is customary, and by that point a new Prime Minister may be in office after David Cameron announced he would step down.
Such was the petition’s popularity on Friday morning that it crashed the government’s website.
A second referendum in Scotland is now likely after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said there had been a “significant change” to the circumstances of the original poll and that it should be back “on the table”.
Parliament released a message on its official website that it will consider the request for a discussion, as parliament is committed to consider any request or initiative with more than 100,000 signatures.
But European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Saturday that the British had voted to leave, and “it doesn’t make any sense to wait until October to try and negotiate the terms of their departure”.
The petition already has over the 100,000 signatures needed for it to be debated in parliament, although this does not mean it will be.
The petition’s organiser James O’Malley, said the capital was “a world city” which should “remain at the heart of Europe”.
The independence petition says: “Let’s face it – the rest of the country disagrees. The real issue now is the terms and conditions of the relationship with the European Union – that’s what we should be concentrating on”.
Brexit negotiations must take place “quickly and swiftly”, EU Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told Britain’s Radio 4 on Saturday.
Advertisement
Former London Mayor Boris Johnson, one of the leading Leave campaigners and the bookmakers’ odds-on favourite to succeed David Cameron, has insisted the United Kingdom is not “turning its back” on Europe.
