The president of the EU commission has said talks on Britain’s departure will be “very, very, very difficult” as Europe’s press turned hostile, attacking Theresa May’s Brexit plans as isolationist, unachievable, extremist – and disastrous for the UK.

Speaking to journalists in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Jean-Claude Juncker played down suggestions that May’s speech on Tuesday was a threat to Europe, and emphasised a deal had to reflect the interests of Britain and the EU.



He said he had spoken to the British prime minister on Tuesday evening and told her the commission was not in a hostile mood: “We want a fair deal with Britain and a fair deal for Britain, but a fair deal means a fair deal for the European Union.”



But he added it would be “a very, very, very difficult negotiation” because Britain would be considered as a foreign country to the rest of the EU.



In Berlin, chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the “clarity” provided by May’s speech but said after talks with the Italian prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, that the remaining EU member states would begin Brexit talks with a united front. She stressed negotiations could only begin when article 50 was triggered.

“I am not worried that we won’t stand together,” she said. “The most important thing is that Europe will not let itself be divided, and we will ensure this with very close contact.” Gentiloni agreed there would be “solidarity” among the EU 27, but “also of course friendship” with Britain.

But if the politicians and officials were diplomatic, much of the continent’s press was openly scornful. “Little Britain – May leads Britain into isolation,” was the front-page headline in Germany’s Die Welt, while Italy’s La Repubblica opted for: “Brexit: London puts up its wall – out of EU and single market.”

Even more outspoken was Der Spiegel, which summarised May’s negotiating stance as “I want, I want, I want”. In an article also published in English, the magazine’s UK correspondent said Britain’s plans amounted to “wilful self-mutilation”.



May’s speech may have been filled with “a glut of conciliatory adjectives” and “superficial pleasantries”, Christophe Scheuerman wrote, but it was in reality “a catalogue of demands topped with a dash of threat”.

May “promised her country a glorious future” but has little control over it, he said. She will have to offer her allies more than graciously “allowing them to export prosecco and cars” to the UK. “She needs Europe. Adjectives alone won’t help her,” Scheuerman wrote.



El País, Spain’s biggest-selling daily paper, was equally scathing, saying in an editorial that May had set out “a road map for a complete British self-exclusion from the EU” and a “hard, extreme and extremist Brexit”.

The paper said this marked “a radical change of position” from May’s “timid, bashful Europeanism” as home secretary, to support for a “shameful, xenophobic nationalism”. The promise of a positive agreement was fallacious, it said.

For Spain’s ABC, the headline was: “May threatens EU with trade war,” while Denmark’s Politiken said May’s speech marked the moment the British “slam the door hard shut on the EU”.

Le Monde said in an editorial Brexit would be hard “... for the British”. The paper said May had “dressed her speech in the nationalist fire that makes a victory of a defeat” but had in reality been forced to accept facts. “Britain will leave not just the single market but the customs union so as to be able to sign independent trade deals,” the French paper said. “The United Kingdom will end up with a status less favourable than that of Turkey.”

The British believe their government will achieve “all the favourable conditions their prime minister claims she will be able to negotiate,” it said, but “there can be no question of London obtaining a superior status than any EU member country”.

Joseph Muscat, the prime minister of Malta, which holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, welcomed May’s announcement that the UK would leave the single market as a sign the government had understood it could not cherrypick the best bits of the EU.



But he, too, said negotiating Brexit would be an “arduous task”, and repeated his assertion that any Brexit deal must be inferior to EU membership. That “should not come as a surprise,” he said. “Thinking it can be otherwise would indicate a detachment from reality.”

Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, welcomed May’s “warm and balanced words” on European integration, which he said showed the UK had accepted and understood the indivisibility of the EU’s single market.

But Tusk added that it appeared a bit more British comprehension was still needed. He said: “It would be good if our partners also understood that there will be no place for pick-and-choose tactics in our future negotiations.”

Juncker pledged in Strasbourg to do everything to make sure “the negotiations will be according to the rules and yield good results”. He said: “To those who think the moment has come to deconstruct Europe and take it to pieces, they are completely wrong.”

