EU vice-chief says UK should decide on Brexit terms

PanARMENIAN.Net - Britain’s political leaders should “get their act together” and tell the European Union what they want from their divorce, Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s vice-president has said, according to the Guardian.

Timmermans, the Dutch right-hand man to the commission’s chief, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Brexit was an “existential issue” for the rest of the EU but the bloc had “enormous possibilities” to thrive.

“I follow closely what is happening in the UK and the political discussions in the UK, and perhaps they should first get their act together and tell us what they really want out of this,” Timmermans said.

“It’s not the 27 other member states who asked the United Kingdom to leave. On the contrary, they pleaded with the UK to stay,” he added in an interview with AFP to mark Thursday’s publication in French of Fraternité, a book on Europe.

“The onus is on the country that decides to leave to tell us how they want to leave and I think that’s the starting point of the discussion,” said Timmermans, who was a key figure in negotiations with Britain before the referendum.

The British prime minister, Theresa May, held a special Brexit “brainstorm” cabinet meeting on Tuesday, August 30 amid reports on major divisions on how to proceed, while May has said she would not trigger the two-year divorce process until next year.

Meanwhile the other 27 EU leaders will meet in Slovakia on 16 September to plan a way forward, The Guardian said.

But Timmermans said the EU should not necessarily take a tough stance with Britain, as some leaders have suggested.

“The United Kingdom is not going anywhere, it’s going to be geographically where it is now, the Channel is not going to get any broader,” said Timmermans. “So in that sense the UK will remain a European country even if it’s not a member of the European Union and that should be the basis, I believe, for the negotiations.”