The EU will force a humiliated Theresa May to explain her intentions in Brussels as senior figures warned that with the clock ticking on Brexit negotiations, Britain’s hung parliament was an “own goal” and a “disaster” that risked delaying or derailing the talks.

May said on Friday Brexit talks would begin on 19 June as planned, but officials in Brussels were braced for a delay. Sources said a meeting of the European council on 22 June was the EU27’s new deadline for wanting to know the prime minister’s plans in light of the politically disastrous loss of her majority.

The rise of the remainers is about to begin. May’s Brexit strategy lies in ruins | Simon Jenkins Read more

Donald Tusk, the European council president, reminded London that article 50 of the Lisbon treaty had already been triggered and talks would therefore have to be concluded by March 2019.

“We don’t know when Brexit talks start,” Tusk tweeted on Friday. “We know when they must end. Do your best to avoid a ‘no deal’ as result of ‘no negotiations’.” In a letter congratulating May on her reappointment, Tusk later warned there was “no time to lose” in starting the negotiations.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, said the “timetable and EU positions are clear” and talks should start “when the UK is ready”, while the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, confirmed the bloc stood ready to “open negotiations tomorrow morning at half-past nine”.

Although he also said he “strongly hoped” there would be no further delay, Juncker appeared in comments to the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Germany to suggest some slippage may be unavoidable. “The dust in the UK now has to settle,” he said.

It had been hoped officials from both sides would hold informal talks next week on logistics before formal talks began during the week starting 19 June. But with a cabinet reshuffle and new Brexit goals likely following the election result, that timetable now seems unrealistic in Brussels.

Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit representative, described the election result as “yet another own goal – after Cameron now May”, adding: “I thought surrealism was a Belgian invention.”

Verhofstadt said the election outcome would “make already complex negotiations even more complicated. I hope the UK will soon have a stable government to start negotiations. This is not only about the UK, but also about the future of Europe”.

The German EU commissioner, Günther Oettinger, said the bloc needed “a government that can act. With a weak negotiating partner, there’s a danger the negotiations will turn out badly for both sides … I expect more uncertainty”.



His compatriot Manfred Weber, the leader of the powerful conservative European People’s party group in the European parliament, tweeted that the Brexit clock was now ticking and Britain “needs a government that is ready to negotiate, and fast”.

Most European capitals had believed May would be returned to government with some form of majority, and expected that to lead to at best difficult talks, and at worst a breakdown of the negotiations possibly as early as this summer.

They would have preferred the UK government to have a strong majority since it would then feel politically confident enough to make potentially difficult concessions.

A senior diplomat said of Friday morning’s result: “We want a deal. We are professionals, we have a mandate to get a deal, and we want a deal more than anyone. But we don’t even know who we are negotiating with.”

Andrius Kubilius, a former conservative prime minister of Lithuania who sits on his country’s Brexit committee, warned that the British government’s need to keep an unstable parliamentary alliance together was plainly a threat to progress on talks.

“I think it will be much messier now and negotiations will be much more difficult,” he said. “That’s an early thought but it depends on the internal decisions of Britain.” Kubilius added: “I think there will be a greater demand for a softer Brexit now and that is to be welcomed.”

The EU had until now believed it understood that May wanted to take the UK out of both the single market and the customs union, but early on Friday the Brexit secretary, David Davis, suggested the election result could prompt a rethink.

Davis said of the Tories’ manifesto pledges on the single market and customs union: “That’s what it [the election] was about, that’s what we put in front of the people, we’ll see tomorrow whether they’ve accepted that or not. That will be their decision.”

The French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, was quick to scotch any suggestion that Britain might perform a U-turn and ask to stay in the EU – which would need EU agreement – but said he did expect Brexit negotiations to be “long and complex”.



But Germany’s European affairs minister, Michael Roth, noted that the schedule was tight. “We should not waste any time,” Roth said. France’s EU commissioner, Pierre Moscovici, said the timetable for leaving in 2019 was not optional but fixed in treaty law.

Gianni Pittella, the leader of the socialist group in the European parliament, said British voters had “punished the clear incompetence of Theresa May. She wanted the UK to have a stronger and harder negotiating position, but has the chaos of a hung parliament”.

There are already clear bones of contention in the negotiations. The EU has made plain it expects sufficient progress to be made on the divorce deal – including the size of the UK’s exit bill, citizens’ rights and the border in Ireland – before it will begin to discuss a future trade deal.



Predicting “the row of the summer”, Davis insisted in May that Britain wanted to “see everything packaged up together, and that’s what we’re going to do”. He also said the UK could walk away if confronted with the €100bn (£88bn) settlement the EU is said to be considering.