EU chief Donald Tusk tells UK it’s 'hard Brexit or no Brexit'

Brexit: European Union Council President Donald Tusk warns UK it's "Hard-Brexit" or "No Brexit"
AP
Saphora Smith14 October 2016

European Council President Donald Tusk has warned Britain that the only alternative to a “hard Brexit” is no Brexit at all.

Speaking in Brussels, Mr Tusk said that there was no room for negotiation on freedom of movement as a condition for access to the single market.

He said there would be "no compromises", ruling out a scenario where Britain could curb European immigration to the UK while retaining access to the trade block.

Britain, he said, has a simple choice. Either it makes a clean break from the European Union, including the single market, or it reverses the June 23 referendum decision in which 52 per cent of the country voted to leave the EU.

The statement will come as blow to Remainers who have pushed for a so-called “soft Brexit” in which Britain would retain access to the single market.

Mr Tusk, who will chair meetings of European leaders in charge of negotiating Britain’s exit from the union, mocked the Vote Leave campaign promise that Britain could “have the EU cake and eat it too.”

Union: Prime Minister Theresa May meets European Council President Donald Tusk in London, September 2016 (David Mirzoeff/PA )
David Mirzoeff/PA

He said: “To all who believe in it, I propose a simple experiment. Buy a cake, eat it, and see if it still there on the plate.

“The brutal truth is that Brexit will be a loss for all of us. There will be no cakes on the table. For anyone. There will be only salt and vinegar.”

His comments are likely to be used by Leave MPs as evidence that the UK will be better off for quitting the single market and brokering international trade deals.

At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham last month, Prime Minister Theresa May told the Conservatives' grass roots that Britain would trigger the European Union's Article 50 exit clause by the end of March 2017 and pledged to control European immigration to the UK even if it meant leaving the EU's single market.

“Let me be clear,” said Mrs May,“we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.”

She added that MPs who were calling on the government to do everything in its power to keep Britain in the single market were looking at Brexit “the wrong way”.

Mr Tusk’s statement comes as a British businesswoman has brought a case to the High Court challenging the government’s right to commence Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union without parliamentary approval.

Investment manager Gina Miller, among others, argues that the government cannot invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, formally notifying Brussels of Britain’s departure from the union, without MPs passing an act of parliament.

The government maintains that the people’s decision on June 23 to leave the European Union has given ministers a mandate to proceed with exit negotiations and that the ancient powers of Royal Prerogative gives HMG executive power.

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