European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has reiterated the priority of the U.K. paying its Brexit bill | Patrick Hertzog/AFP via Getty Images Juncker calls Brexit talks on citizens’ rights ‘nonsense’ ‘Now they have to pay,’ Commission president says of the UK’s Brexit bill.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Friday urged the U.K. to pay its Brexit bill "now" and called discussions on the issue of citizens’ rights “nonsense.”

Speaking to students in Luxembourg, Juncker said he regretted that the fifth round of Brexit talks this week had not led to any “real compromise” on the question of a financial settlement. And although the EU owed a lot to the U.K., “now they have to pay,” he said.

Juncker told students from the University of Luxembourg: “We cannot find, for the time being, a real compromise as far as the remaining financial commitments of the U.K. are concerned. As we cannot do this, we will not be able to say during the European Council in October that now we can move to the second phase of the negotiations, which means the shaping of the British-European future. Things have to [be] done. One has to deliver.”

To laughter from the students, he added: “If you are sitting in the bar and you are ordering 28 beers and then suddenly some of your colleagues [leave without] paying, that is not feasible. They have to pay, they have to pay.

“Not in an impossible way. I am not in a revenge way. I am not hating the British. We Europeans have to be grateful for many things to Britain. During the war, before the war, after the war. Everywhere and every time. But now they have to pay.”

His comments echoed those of Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, who said Thursday that talks had reached “deadlock” over the U.K.’s financial obligations and that he would not recommend the European Council authorize a shift to the second phase of talks during a summit in Brussels next week.

While acknowledging that progress had been made on the issue of EU citizens' rights, Juncker said he was unclear why the subject was even being discussed.

“I don’t even understand this problem,” Juncker said. "Why not say, easily, with common sense — which is not a political category, as we know — that things will stay as they are? The Europeans — ‘foreigners,’ as they are saying in London — they are there in the island, and so many British friends are here. Let them here, let them there. Why are we discussing nonsense like that?”

On Thursday, Barnier and the U.K.’s lead negotiator, David Davis, said there had been progress on the issue of citizens’ rights. Barnier said the EU would examine a plan put forward by the U.K. for a new registration process for EU citizens residing in Britain.