STRASBOURG, France (AP):
European Union, eu, leaders were pleading Wednesday with the UK to finally get its act together on Brexit, end internal strife and come up with a realistic plan to leave the bloc well over two years after Britain decided to leave the EU and departure just 10 weeks away.
European politicians watched the spectacle with a mix of shock and utter bafflement after Britain’s Parliament discarded Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal in a historic defeat for the government late Tuesday.
EU officials immediately said that plans to cope with a disorderly, no-deal departure on March 29, rife with the prospect of chaos on roads, airports and administration, would be sped up.
Hours after the humiliating setback for May’s government, EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said early Wednesday that the EU was “fearing more than ever that there is a risk” of a cliff-edge departure.
Guy Verhofstadt, the chief Brexit official in the EU parliament, said in an interview with The Associated Press that Britain had better start seeing the impending departure as a national crisis that goes well beyond party politics.
“The only lesson for them is that they need to sit around one table, opposition and majority, to sort out what is in the national interest,” Verhofstadt said.
What started as a fight within the Conservative Party, which led to the June 2016 referendum, then spread to a hostile and bitter divide across British society and most parties in Parliament.
And despite the urgency and the massive economic stakes in winning a smooth departure with a long transition period and a raft of accompanying measures, division has only increased.
“Brexit is a disgrace for the British people and for the EU. Nobody wins. We all lose, in particular the British people,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told EU legislatos.
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