BRUSSELS // The European Union's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has warned London not to waste time, as Brussels waits for embattled British prime minister Theresa May to name a date for talks.
Mr Barnier lamented that it was already three months since Mrs May had formally triggered the two-year process of Britain leaving the European Union.
"My preoccupation is that time is passing, it is passing quicker than anyone believes because the subjects we have to deal with are extraordinarily complex ... I can't negotiate with myself," Mr Barnier told the Financial Times.
"It will take us several months to draw out the conditions of an orderly withdrawal ... so let's not waste time," he said.
Formal negotiations between Barnier and British Brexit minister David Davis had been due to start next week but that timetable has been thrown into doubt by Mrs May's catastrophic loss of a parliamentary majority in last Thursday's election.
She is now seeking to cling to power by forging an alliance with the Democratic Unionst party of Northern Ireland.
Mr Barnier held "talks about talks" in Brussels with Mrs May's Brexit adviser Olly Robbins and Britain's ambassador to the EU, Tim Barrow, on Monday but they failed to agree on a date for the negotiations to begin. The French daily Le Monde quoted Mr Barnier as saying, "I need a British delegation and a head of delegation who are stable, responsible and have a mandate."
Mr Barnier has said he wants to wrap up a Brexit deal by October 2018 so it has time to get it through national parliaments and the European Parliament in time for Britain's departure from the bloc at the end of March 2019.
The EU president Donald Tusk also said there was "no time to lose" if Britain was to avoid crashing out without a deal on future relations.
However, the German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said it was not too late for UK. to change its mind.
"The British government has said we will stay with the Brexit," Mr Schaeuble said. "We take the decision as a matter of respect. But if they wanted to change their decision, of course, they would find open doors."
Meanwhile in London, the former prime minister Sir John Major joined a growing chorus of voices telling Theresa May she does not have a mandate to pursue the hard Brexit she was planning.
"The views of those who wish to stay in are going to have to be borne in mind to a much greater extent after this election: a hard Brexit was not endorsed by the electorate," Sir John Major said on Tuesday in a BBC radio interview. "We have to recognise that the election changed if not everything, then a very great deal, and the government are going to have to respond to that."
Sir John was prime minister in the 1990s when the question of European integration also threatened to tear apart the Conservative party nd he put his own leadership on the line to get the Maastricht Treaty — the blueprint for the European Union — passed through the House of Commons, with the support of the Ulster Unionist Party.
Two decades later May's own grip on power is tenuous. Her weakened premiership has revived a battle between Conservative hardliners who want a clean break from the EU and the emboldened pro-EU pmembers of parliament who see a chance to soften the landing.
Bloomberg
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