There would be no turning back from the decision to leave the bloc and the U.K. is expected to kick off its European Union (EU) exit negotiations as soon as a new prime minister is in place, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel reiterated that there would be no “cherry picking” with the U.K. able to pick and choose which aspects of EU life it wanted to keep and warned that Britain would have to accept the good with the bad in its future relationship with the union. She said this while speaking to national broadcaster ZDF at the weekend.

“The decision (of Britons to leave the EU) has been taken … and the next step is – and Britain will do this only when they have a new prime minister – to invoke Article 50,” she told public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday, Reuters reported.

“I expect that to happen. I deal with reality and I firmly expect that application will be made,” Merkel added in response to the question of any chance that Brexit would not happen.

The tone of talks between the EU and Britain when its negotiations over a Brexit take place is expected to be influenced by Merkel as she is the leader of Europe’s most powerful nation Germany. Following the June 23 referendum when 52 percent of voters opted to leave the economic and political bloc, the U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron resigned from his post.

With a leadership race now underway to find the next leader of the ruling Conservative party and next prime minister, the vote caused turmoil in financial markets as well as the U.K.’s political establishment. Whoever comes to power in the UK will have the difficult task of overseeing potentially awkward Brexit talks. At the moment, two women – Home Secretary Theresa May and Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom are running for the Prime Minister’s post.

Problematically, the U.K. has to accept the EU’s founding principles, known as the “four freedoms,” that guarantee the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people so that UK is able to maintain its lucrative access to the EU’s single market and 500 million consumers which Britain would like to have. However for a portion of the population who voted for Brexit in order to limit immigration, the latter freedom is a sore point.

The so-called “Norway option” can  also be considered during the negotiations. Norway which gives it access to the single market even though it is not a member of the EU but since it is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA).

However Norway has had to accept the EU’s rules, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg told CNBC.

“I think the Norway option is the best for Norway,” Solberg told CNBC on the sidelines of the NATO summit over the weekend.

Eyebrows over how the U.K. will be treated by EU leaders when talks take place have been raised by Merkel’s tough tone with the U.K. Some urge that to discourage other countries to follow the example of Brexit with their own EU referendums, U.K. should not be given too good a post-EU membership deal so that an example of the U.K. is made.

(Adapted from CNBC)

Categories: Economy & Finance, Geopolitics