A guide to the EU’s exit clause as Britain looks to leave

Once London triggers the exit clause, the remaining 27 members of the European Union will draw up the guidelines for it to happen and must accept Britain’s departure by a qualified majority vote – around two-thirds.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and other European leaders insist they won’t begin any talks until Britain invokes the Article 50 of the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon, which sets in motion a two-year process to split from the group created to unify Europe after the horrors of World War II.

Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that he will step down by October, but the process of choosing a new leader of the Conservative Party has only begun.

Despite a sunny 20 degrees in Brussels, there was a chill in the air when David Cameron met his European Union colleagues for their first time since Britain voted last Thursday to leave the bloc. Luxembourg’s prime minister Xavier Bettel’s succinct request, via Facebook: “Marriage or divorce, nothing in between”. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, which voted against leave the European Union, leaders have voiced varying degrees of anger over the vote.

Cameron was facing calls to start the exit talks as soon as possible, but he has said such negotiations should not be launched before October, when he resigns and a new British leader can lead the talks.

“Whoever wants to leave this family can not expect to have no more obligations but to keep privileges”, she said.

Central European nations led by Hungary refuse to accept the imposition of EU refugee quotas.

French president François Hollande, facing a rising far-right, anti-EU opposition at home, was even more outspoken in urging a British departure “as quickly as possible”.

Germany’s financial market regulator delivered a double blow to the City of London, saying it could not host the headquarters of a planned European stock exchange giant after Britain leaves the EU, and could not remain a centre for trading in euros. The European Investment Bank.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said England had collapsed “politically, monetarily, constitutionally and economically”. “There’s been a little bit of hysteria post-Brexit vote, as if somehow NATO’s gone, the trans-Atlantic alliance is dissolving, and every country is rushing off to its own corner”.

In view of the disarray in Britain, some people questioned whether Brexit would happen at all.

“We urgently need leadership, particularly given the political vacuum”, Carolyn Fairbairn, the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said on a conference call with reporters.