EU leaders say 'Brexit' should be ASAP

European Union leaders want the United Kingdom to leave the alliance as soon as possible, as repercussions of the nation’s historic vote to leave the bloc continued to reverberate.

Top diplomats from France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg — the EU's six founding nations — met Saturday in Berlin for hastily arranged talks following the stunning vote by Britons to leave the political alliance.

"The shock of the vote is still sitting deep, but these are also days where not all the answers are ready," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters. “It’s totally clear that in times like these, one should neither be hysterical nor fall into paralysis,” he said.
 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at a different news conference outside Berlin, prodded Britain to start the exit process. “To be honest, it shouldn’t take forever, that’s right — but I would not fight over a short period of time,” she said.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz told The Guardian that EU lawyers were examining whether the process could be sped up to enable the U.K. to leave the 28-nation alliance. Only the U.K., as the departing nation, can trigger the process by launching Article 50 of the EU charter, called the Lisbon treaty. Once it does, exit negotiations will last for two years.

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said there was urgency "so that we don’t have a period of uncertainty, with financial consequences, political consequences.”

Jonathan Hill, the U.K.’s pro-“remain” commissioner to the EU, announced his resignation Saturday.

"I don't believe it is right that I should carry on as the British commissioner as though nothing had happened," he said.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who backed staying in the EU, wants his successor to negotiate the process. He has vowed to stand down by October.

Thursday’s referendum was a close contest: 52% backed leaving and 48% voted to remain.

The result sent global markets into turmoil and created deep anxieties about the future of the bloc, which will now have 27 members.

In a fresh sign of problems, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the U.K.'s outlook Saturday from “stable” to “negative.” Moody's said the referendum result “will herald a prolonged period of uncertainty for the U.K., with negative implications for the country’s medium-term growth outlook.”

Moody's said it believed that "many investment and spending decisions are likely to be put on hold" during the period of the U.K. withdrawal from the EU and negotiating a new trade agreement with the bloc.

The entire withdrawal process may take longer than two years if the U.K. requests an extension. All 27 members of the EU would need to approve that request.

Standard & Poor’s, another credit ratings firm, is considering downgrading the country because of the uncertainty related to the vote. A lower rating could mean higher borrowing costs for the government. That could lead to less money to spend on infrastructure projects as well as schools, hospitals and roads.

The British pound fell 11% to a 31-year low on the result Friday and the U.S. stock market suffered its worst drop in 10 months. The pound rose 0.1% to $1.40 Saturday.

Mark Boleat, who chairs policy at The City of London Corporation, an organization that represents the U.K.'s powerful financial services industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people, attempted to allay fears about the impact of the vote.

“The City of London has thrived as a financial and trading center for more than a thousand years and will continue to do so,” he said in a statement.

“There will be no mass exit of banks and financial institutions from the square mile. While there will be uncertainty as 'Brexit' (British exit) negotiations go on, we are still the financial center of the fifth-largest economy in the world,” Boleat said.