EU Warns Of 'Significant Disruption' From No-Deal After Whitehall Brexit Chaos Memo Leaked

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EU Warns of 'Significant Disruption' From No-Deal After Whitehall Brexit Chaos Memo Leaked

A UK exit from the European Union without a deal will result in "significant disruption" that would affect both citizens and businesses in this country and across the bloc, with London expected to suffer much greater losses that the remaining EU 27 members, the European Commission warned on Monday, following the publication of a Whitehall leak about the Brexit worst-case scenario

BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th August, 2019) A UK exit from the European Union without a deal will result in "significant disruption" that would affect both citizens and businesses in this country and across the bloc, with London expected to suffer much greater losses that the remaining EU 27 members, the European Commission warned on Monday, following the publication of a Whitehall leak about the Brexit worst-case scenario.

On the weekend, The Sunday Times published a leaked Whitehall paper, showing that the UK government did not rule out that the country might face food, fuel and medicine shortages as well as months of border delays and a rise in social care costs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Michael Gove, the minister in charge of no-deal preparations, however, said that the report outlined a worst-case scenario rather than some most likely ramifications.

Commenting on the leak, the deputy chief spokeswoman for the commission, Natasha Bertaud, recalled that the UK failure to ratify the agreed withdrawal deal would mean that "all EU Primary and secondary law will cease to apply to the UK from this moment onwards.

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"This will obviously cause significant disruption both for citizens and businesses and it would have a serious negative economic impact ... That would be proportionally much greater for the United Kingdom than it would be in the EU 27 member states," Bertaud added at a briefing.

The European Union is, meanwhile, "prepared for all eventualities," she added, noting however that the no-deal was "not a preferred outcome."

Bertaud also stressed that the bloc did not see "at this stage" any need for further measures in addition to those already taken by Brussels to protect the interests of the EU 27 from the no-deal fallout.

Since January 2019, the UK parliament has thrice rejected the divorce deal that was negotiated with Brussels by the Theresa May government. New Prime Minister Boris Johnson vows to take the country out of the European Union without "ifs and buts" by the October 31 deadline unless the intransigent bloc agrees to renegotiate the contentious deal.