European Union leaders fear Prime Minister Theresa May's shock loss of her majority in the snap British election will delay Brexit talks due to start this month, and so raise the risk of negotiations failing.
“We don’t know when Brexit talks start. We know when they must end,” tweeted Donald Tusk, the EU summit chair overseeing negotiations that the EU had planned to start on 19 June.
EU Commission chief Juncker also said that he hopes that the election result will cause no further delays in Brexit talks.
Tusk’s reference to the March 2019 deadline when Britain will be out of the European Union with or without an agreed deal to avoid legal limbo for people and businesses reflected mounting concern that British chaos could further disrupt all of Europe.
"Do your best to avoid a 'no deal' as result of 'no negotiations'," Tusk said, calling for urgency to avert the risk that, having bound Britain in March to a two-year countdown to Brexit, May's failed electoral gamble could waste further time.
Guenther Oettinger, the German member of the EU executive, warned that a weak British leadership was a problem for the Union: “We need a government that can act,” he told the Deutschlandfunk radio station. “With a weak negotiating partner, there’s the danger that the negotiations will turn out badly.”
Oettinger's boss, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, told a German paper: "It's up to the British to make the next move... We've been ready to negotiate for months."
Juncker's Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier made clear talks could only now start once Britain has a team in place: “Brexit negotiations should start when UK is ready,” he tweeted.
“Timetable and EU positions are clear. Let's put our minds together on striking a deal.”
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe was quick to scotch any suggestion that Britain might do a U-turn and ask to stay in the EU – something that would need EU agreement.
Few Europeans voiced much sympathy for May. Some compared her to her predecessor David Cameron, who sought to silence Eurosceptic fellow Conservatives by calling the referendum on EU membership, which ended his career and shocked Europe.
(The copy has been shortened for length.)
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