Merkel tells Britain: ‘We can’t talk about leaving the EU until you apply to quit’
INFORMAL discussions on Brexit cannot begin until London applies to leave the EU, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday.
Speaking after talks in Berlin with French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Ms Merkel said they had all ‘agreed that there will be no informal or formal talks about an exit of Great Britain until a request has been submitted to the European Council’.
Ms Merkel said she was neither rushing nor delaying Britain’s departure. ‘I have neither a brake nor an accelerator, rather I have the job of reflecting when this message [to leave the bloc] arrives about how exactly we implement it,’ Ms Merkel told a news conference.
The chief executive of Britain’s Vote Leave campaign, Matthew Elliott, said that London should begin informal negotiations on a full settlement governing its post-exit relationship with the EU before invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty sets out how an EU country might voluntarily leave the union.
But Ms Merkel, who is Europe’s most powerful leader and will play a key role in shaping the future relationship between Britain and the EU, dismissed such a possibility. ‘We can’t begin informal talks without having the message [Article 50] from Britain. That is clear for me,’ she said.
Aked if Britain could wait until a
‘We can’t leave a permanent impasse’
new prime minister is chosen to make the formal announcement about its intention to leave the bloc, Ms Merkel said: ‘We can’t have a permanent impasse.’
‘Britain remains a member of the European Union until an application [to leave] is submitted and then there will be long negotiations,’ she added.
Ms Merkel said she had ‘some understanding’ for Britain taking time to analyse its situation and said she would discuss the matter with David Cameron at a gathering of EU leaders in Brussels on Tuesday.
Earlier, her spokesman said the Chancellor is pursuing ‘calm and reasoned’ approach to relations with Britain after its vote to leave the European Union, a government spokesman said on Monday.
Asked whether Ms Merkel’s approach was ‘soft’, spokesman Steffen Seibert said the chancellor was being ‘calm’.
‘We need to be in a position, after the completion of a process that is coming now, to continue working closely, with trust and well with this country,’ he told a regular government news conference.
In a joint statement, the leaders of Germany, France and Italy say the European Union ‘must dedicate itself to the worries expressed by its citizens’.
The three leaders said that the EU is a success and that the bloc is indispensable in securing ‘the economic and social progress for our people, and to assert Europe’s role in the world’.
All three leaders acknowledged that the EU can only advance if it is supported by its people. The union and especially its policy makers in Brussels have often been criticized for being detached from ordinary people’s worries – a sentiment that has led to a strengthening of anti-EU movements in several of its member states. President Hollande stressed that while they respected Britain’s vote to leave the union, ‘we also can expect respect from them,’ adding that Europe doesn’t want to lose time to get started working on these important issues with “clarity, speed and unity’.
Prime Minister Renzi said that despite the leaders’ sadness about Britain’s decision, it was ‘also a convenient time to work on a new chapter for Europe’.
European Central Bank head Mario Draghi is pulling out of a panel later this week at the bank’s annual policy conference in Portugal so he can attend a meeting of EU leaders.
The European Council of heads of state and government is meeting today and tomorrow in Brussels for the first time since Britain voted to leave the European Union, throwing British and European politics into disarray. Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen and Bank of England governor Mark Carney were to have appeared with Mr Draghi at the panel discussion on Wednesday, but have also cancelled.
The ECB’s conference in Sintra, Portugal is a place for heavyweight economists to confer. Mr Draghi is still giving the keynote speech today, the ECB said.