Well, there’s been a lot of hiccups, legal barriers, preliminary negotiations and shitloads of panic, but now we’ve got a concrete date for the actual beginning of Brexit.
Prime Minister Theresa May will trigger Article 50 – the formal mechanism for beginning negotiations for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union – on March 29. Speaking on what she was aiming to do, May was pretty clear:
I have set out my objectives. These include getting a good free trade deal. They include putting issues like continuing working together on issues like security at the core of what we are doing. We are going to be out there, negotiating hard, delivering on what the British people voted for.
Of course, this doesn’t mean Brexit is going to be a hasty or uncomplicated affair. EU sources told The Guardian that May missed her chance at a speedy beginning to Brexit, and that they may make her wait up to six weeks before providing a response to her letter triggering Article 50.
Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, says he’ll get the draft guidelines to the EU27 member states very quickly.
Within 48 hours of the UK triggering Article 50, I will present the draft #Brexit guidelines to the EU27 Member States.
— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) March 20, 2017
Formal EU-UK negotiations are unlikely to start until mid-May at the very earliest, and probably not until June. Turns out ripping your country out of a spider’s nest of treaties, regulations and trade deals isn’t actually a smooth process. Who knew?
So the ball will be rolling from March 29. But it’s going to be rolling very, very slowly.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Getty Images.
