File now to leave, EU urges Cameron

British Prime Minister David Cameron (left) talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at EU headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday.
British Prime Minister David Cameron (left) talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at EU headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday.

BRUSSELS -- European leaders Tuesday warned British Prime Minister David Cameron that there's no turning back after his country's vote to leave the European Union, and they pressed for a quick and clear departure plan to quell anxiety about the continent's future.

photo

AP

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (from left), French President Francois Hollande, Polish Prime Minister Meata Szydto and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte gather Tuesday at a European Union meeting in Brussels to discuss Britain’s exit from the EU.

At the start of a two-day summit of the bloc's 28 member states, leaders rejected Cameron's pleas for favorable conditions for the United Kingdom once it leaves the EU.

The leaders of Britain's "Leave" campaign hope the nation can still enjoy many perks of the EU internal market for business while being able to deny EU citizens entry to the U.K. to address concerns about unlimited immigration.

Cameron told members of the bloc that their past refusals to give him a deal that reduced immigration to the U.K. had cost him the referendum and his job, according to a British government official. After the vote last week, the prime minister announced his plans to resign this fall.

He warned that if the EU wants a close economic relationship with the U.K. in the future, it will have to shift ground and find a way to tackle immigration, the official said.

Cameron frustrated the European leaders by refusing to immediately file to start Britain's departure process, saying he would leave the EU departure negotiations to his successor.

"Everyone wants to see a clear model appear" for Britain's future relations with the bloc, he said, adding that he "can't put a time frame on that."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed suggestions that Cameron's successor might not start the formal EU withdrawal process because of the financial turmoil resulting from Britain's vote to leave the EU and confusion about how to extract a country from the EU.

"I see no way to reverse it," Merkel said after Tuesday's meetings. She said this is not the time for "wishful thinking."

Donald Tusk, president of the EU Council, a leadership body the sets the EU's political direction, agreed. "Europe is ready to start the divorce process, even today," he said.

Britain's vote last week unleashed financial and political turmoil not only in Britain but across the EU. World markets and the pound tumbled in the days after the vote, though they began to stabilize Tuesday, with investors betting that the relationship between Britain and the EU will change less than they had initially feared.

Members of the bloc want the withdrawal process to proceed as smoothly and as quickly as possible, but not so painlessly for Britain that it encourages populist movements in other wavering nations to push for exit referendums of their own that would destabilize the EU.

Merkel sought to thread that needle in a speech Tuesday to the German Parliament before she left for the Brussels meeting. She warned that Britain would suffer as a result of its vote and could not expect to enjoy the privileges of membership, such as access to Europe's single market, while sloughing off its burdens.

"Whoever wants to leave this family cannot expect to have no more obligations but to keep the privileges," she said. "There must be and will be a noticeable difference between whether a country wants to be a member of the European Union family or not."

French President Francois Hollande said Britain will have to meet strict conditions if it wants to continue to be part of the single market. "You cannot have the freedom of capital movement, the freedom of goods, freedom of services and then say, 'When it comes to people, stay put!' Well no, it doesn't work that way," he said.

The vote in Britain has done more than embolden opponents who denounce the EU as a distant and meddling force. It has also raised to the surface the bitterness and anger left by earlier crises, notably an economic slowdown and an uncontrolled influx of migrants across Europe's open borders.

Instead of dealing with just the crisis of confidence set off by the vote, Europeans leaders are effectively confronting all of the crises of recent years at one time. Still unresolved are arguments over austerity -- the German-led prescription for a financial crisis that began in Greece in 2008 -- and whether the EU should be merely a free-trade zone or part of a more ambitious program of "ever closer union," a cause enshrined in the 1957 Treaty of Rome.

Arriving for the Brussels summit, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras -- whose country voted in a referendum last year to reject a financial bailout offered by Brussels only to accept even harsher terms to avoid expulsion from Europe's common currency -- described the British referendum result as a "sad wake-up call" that should force the EU to abandon policies of austerity and "endless negotiations behind closed doors."

"Let us make Europe more attractive to its people," he said.

In a special session of the EU parliament earlier Tuesday, talk of Britain's exit led to accusations of campaign "lies" by those on the "Leave" side.

"You as a political project are in denial," said Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU U.K. Independence Party. "When I came here 17 years ago and said I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me. Well, you're not laughing now, are you?"

Members of the assembly were united in calls for change but offered no common vision of how. "Europe needs change," said Manfred Weber, an ally of Merkel's. "But we want to improve it, not destroy it."

Realizing the threat of a further rift in Europe, Tusk said that he was planning a special meeting of the EU leaders in Slovakia in September to chart a way forward. Merkel pledged to use "all her strength" to prevent the EU from drifting apart.

NATO questions

Also Tuesday, NATO's secretary-general said Europe's struggle to chart a path forward makes cooperation between the EU and the U.S.-led alliance more vital than ever.

Arriving at the EU summit, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said "we have to send a clear message that the vote of the U.K. to leave the European Union doesn't mean that we are not able to cooperate, to work together."

Like 22 other EU member states, Britain also belongs to NATO, and there are widespread fears that its exit from the EU could hamper collective security efforts. They include actions to fight Islamic extremist violence and moves to forge a united front in confronting what NATO nations see as Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Last week, Stoltenberg said the British electorate's decision leaves Europe more fragmented. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, one of his predecessors as NATO's top civilian official, said in a commentary published Tuesday that the British exit from the EU is "bad news for NATO."

It will "negatively affect the close relationship between the EU and NATO, which the U.K. had been a key part of," he said.

Stoltenberg said Tuesday that it is too early to grasp the consequences of the British decision but that government officials in London have assured him that their country's allegiance to NATO is unwavering.

"My message today is about cooperation and about unity," he said. "Unity and cooperation was of course important also before the U.K. vote. It has become even more important now."

Next week, NATO and the EU plan to sign a joint statement at the alliance's summit in Warsaw that will pledge expanded coordination in the security field. Stoltenberg said Tuesday that he wanted to discuss even greater cooperation with the EU.

"I would like to see even more progress," he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Higgins, James Kanter, Alison Smale, Aurelien Breeden, Benoit Morenne, Sewell Chan and Michael Wolgelenter of The New York Times; by John-Thor Dahlburg, Raf Casert, Lorne Cook, Geir Moulson, Angela Charlton, David Rising and staff members of The Associated Press; Michael Birnbaum, Griff Witte, Anthony Faiola, Brian Murphy and staff members of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 06/29/2016

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