Merkel is due to meet with French President Francois Hollande later today

EU leaders tonight said they will not open informal talks with Britain on Brexit and demanded David Cameron get on with triggering the official notification.

Britain has to trigger 'article 50' of the Lisbon Party to officially begin a two year negotiation that will end with the final Brexit.

Leading Brexiteers had demanded the EU talk informally to hammer out an outline of the deal before formal talks. Mr Cameron this afternoon backed the suggestion in the Commons.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel tonight said 'we agree there will be no formal or informal talks' with Britain until Article 50 of the EU treaty has been invoked.

She was speaking in Berlin after meeting with French President Francois Hollande and Italian premier Matteo Renzi.

Earlier, Mrs Merkel said she has a 'certain amount of understanding' for the fact that Britain may need 'a certain amount of time' to analyse what happens next.

Angela Merkel, pictured with Francois Hollande and Matteo Renzi today, announced there would be no informal talks on Brexit before an Article 50 notification today

The three leaders will infuriate Brexit campaigners in Britain who had hoped to use the transition period before a new PM takes over to begin sketching out a deal

Mrs Merkel said the EU needs to stop other countries following Britain out of the door amid market fears that the bloc is 'no longer governable' after Brexit.

The German Chancellor told her conservative party board in a conference call that it was necessary to prevent other European Union members going down the same path as Britain.

Merkel is also said to have revealed that international financial markets are concerned the EU is 'no longer governable' in the wake of Britain's exit vote.

She added that it was not the right time to pursue a quick deepening of cooperation between euro zone member states.

The EU should instead act on popular concerns such as securing the bloc's borders, creating jobs and improve internal security, she said.

Her comments were reported by two sources who took part in a telephone conference of the board of the Christian Democratic Union.

A German government spokesman said today there will be no informal discussions between Britain and the European Union before the British government has invoked formal divorce proceedings.

Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, said the UK first needed to make the formal Article 50 request - the legal mechanism for the withdrawal of a member state from the EU.

'One thing is clear: before Britain has sent this request there will be no informal preliminary talks about the modalities of leaving,' he said.

Merkel (pictured today) is also said to have revealed that international financial markets are concerned the EU is 'no longer governable' in the wake of Britain's exit vote

German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed European Council President Donald Tusk (right) for talks at the chancellery in Berlin. EU leaders will meet David Cameron in Brussels tomorrow

French President Francois Hollande (right) escorts European Parliament President Martin Schulz after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris

French President Francois Hollande, left, welcomes European Council President Donald Tusk, prior to a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris today

'Only when Britain has made the request according to Article 50 will the European Council draw up guidelines in consensus for an exit agreement,' he added.

Guenther Oettinger, a German member of the EU's executive European Commission, also issued a warning.

'Every day of uncertainty prevents investors from putting their funds into Britain, and also other European markets,' he told Deutschlandfunk radio. 'Cameron and his party will cause damage if they wait until October.'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a softer line. She says she will not battle now over the timeframe and has underlined the need to continue a positive trade relationship with Britain, a big market for German carmakers and other manufacturers.

But a Merkel ally, Volker Kauder, made clear the exit negotiations would not be easy. 'There will be no special treatment, there will be no gifts,' Kauder, who leads Merkel's conservatives in parliament, told ARD television.

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are meeting in Berlin later today with EU President Donald Tusk and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Hollande is pictured at a meeting in Paris earlier today

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has said Brussels can't afford to spend a 'year on procedures' for Britain's exit from the European Union

Speaking on the Today programme, German MP Michael Fuchs, a senior ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, made it clear things were going to have to change.

He said: 'Either you are in a club or you are out of a club. If you are in a club you have to follow the rules. If you are out of the club, there will be different rules.

When asked whether it would be possible for Britain to retain access to the single market, he added: 'It will be possible, of course, but not for free.

'You have to see with Norway, with Switzerland, you have to pay a certain fee. And the per capita fee of Norway is exactly the same as what Britain is now paying into the EU. So there won't be any savings.'

Today, Merkel said she understands that Britain may need 'a certain amount of time to analyse things' regarding its departure from the EU but adds that a 'long-term suspension' of the question wouldn't be in either side's economic interest.

BRUSSELS SHOULD DITCH ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FRENCH MAYOR CLAIMS A French mayor has called for Brussels to ditch its use of the English language after Britain voted to leave the European Union. English is one of 24 'official languages' of the EU while it is also one of the 'working languages' used to conduct every day business. But Robert Ménard, the mayor of the southern French town of Béziers, believes English now no longer has 'any legitimacy' in Brussels in the wake of the Brexit vote. Meanwhile, the left-wing presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon said English can no longer be the 'third working language of the European Parliament'. Robert Ménard, the mayor of the southern French town of Béziers, has called for Brussels to ditch its use of the English language after Britain voted to leave the European Union Ménard believes English now no longer has 'any legitimacy' in Brussels in the wake of the Brexit vote According to The Local, 51 per cent of EU citizens can speak English as a first or second language while just over a quarter can speak French and nearly a third can speak German. Despite Thursday's exit vote, it appears unlikely English would be axed altogether in Brussels since it is also the official language of both Ireland and Malta - both members of the EU. In 2013, an EU report revealed that English had squeezed out every other language in the competition to become the common tongue of Europe. It found that English is the most popular foreign language in all but five European countries, and all of those are small nations that use the language of their larger neighbours. The report also found that two out of three people across the continent have at least a fair working knowledge of English. The report published by the EU statistics arm Eurostat suggested that the dominance of English was likely to become even greater in the future. It found that 94 per cent of secondary school pupils and 83 per cent of primary age pupils across the EU are learning English as their first foreign language, more than four times as many as learn French, German or Spanish. Only in Britain and Ireland is French the top foreign language in schools. Advertisement

She wouldn't comment on whether it's acceptable for London to wait until October, as David Cameron plans.

It comes as a poll showed most Germans back their country's membership of the European Union and do not want a U.K.-style referendum - and they also do not expect other EU member states to follow Britain's example in voting to leave the bloc.

Germany, the EU's economic powerhouse, has been shocked by British voters' decision in last Thursday's referendum to back Brexit.

Eurosceptic parties across Europe have called for their own countries to hold referenda on EU membership, but a Forsa poll published in Monday's edition of the Handelsblatt newspaper showed little public support for this in Germany.

Eighty two percent of Germans polled by Forsa said they would vote to remain in the EU and only 14 percent would back withdrawal. Seventy one percent were opposed to a U.K.-style referendum in Germany, while 27 percent said they backed one.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (pictured with EU counterpart Federica Mogherini) today warned the other 27 European Union nations not to be revengeful toward Britain despite last week's referendum vote

The Forsa poll, which canvassed the views of 1,005 people on June 24, the day after Britain's referendum, also showed that a narrow majority of Germans, 51 percent, did not expect other EU member states to quit the EU against 42 percent who did.

Some Europeans have expressed concern that 'Brexit' may trigger a wave of votes that could destroy the EU.

However, Germany's constitution only foresees a referendum being held if the borders of the country's 16 federal states are to change or if any of them are to fuse, a spokesman for the justice ministry said. If two states were to merge, for example, a referendum would only be held in those two states, he added.

Germans are not keen on popular plebiscites at the federal level after a referendum in 1934 combined the posts of chancellor and president, cementing Adolf Hitler's grip on power. But referenda are sometimes held at the state level.

Volker Kauder, a close ally of Merkel, told public broadcaster ARD on Monday that he was not in favour of Germany holding a referendum on its EU membership.

'I think we have shown in our post-war history that our representative democracy is successful,' he said.

Meanwhile, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are meeting in Berlin today with EU President Donald Tusk and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, ahead of an EU-wide summit Tuesday and Wednesday.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (left) kisses the head of EU Commissioner of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs Pierre Moscovici (right)

Juncker greets European Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Commissioner Jonathan Hill during a meeting of the EU's executive body in Brussels today

US Secretary of State John Kerry today warned the other 27 European Union nations not to be revengeful toward Britain despite last week's referendum vote.

After meeting with his EU counterpart Federica Mogherini, Kerry said anger would not help anyone solve the fundamental issue of the break-up.

He said it was 'absolutely essential that we stay focused on how, in this transitional period, nobody loses their head, nobody goes off half-cocked, people don't start ginning up scatterbrained or revengeful premises.'

There has been growing anger in the EU that despite the UK's decision to leave, the British government could wait for months before starting the complicated process of disentanglement.

Instead, Kerry said both sides must 'look for ways to maintain the strength that will serve the interests and the values that brought us together in the first place.'