Juncker Says EU Running Out of Patience With London Over Brexit Stalemate

BRUSSELS (Sputnik) - President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has warned that Brussels, which has been very patient with London throughout the Brexit process, is starting to lose patience as the United Kingdom has so far failed to achieve any sort of unity over the country's withdrawal from the European Union.

"We had great patience with our UK friends but even this patience is running out. I would like the United Kingdom to reach an agreement on what path to follow next in a few hours, in a few days," Juncker said in an interview with the Rai News television channel, as broadcast in Italian late on Sunday.

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The president of the European Commission noted that while Brussels understood what the UK lawmakers did not like about the Brexit agreement, the bloc did not know "what it [the UK parliament] might say yes to."

Juncker also stated that it was exclusively up to the United Kingdom to decide whether the country needed a second Brexit referendum to come out of the deadlock.

UK citizens voted to leave the European Union in a referendum almost three years ago, but the UK parliament has repeatedly rejected the withdrawal agreement, which was presented by the government after months-long talks with Brussels, and has refused to leave the bloc without any deal at all.

After the highly unpopular divorce deal was voted down for a third time on March 29 — the deadline by which London was supposed to have already agreed on how to leave the bloc — Brussels gave the United Kingdom until April 12 to figure out alternative withdrawal arrangements, or crash out of the union without an accord on that very day.