EU lawmakers to press UK for quick exit ahead of summit

European stocks extended their losses on Monday with the British pound falling to its lowest level in nearly 31 years in the wake of the economic and political uncertainty following Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union.

The Foreign Ministers from EU’s founding six Frank-Walter Steinmeier from Germany, Didier Reynders from Belgium, Paolo Gentiloni from Italy, Bert Koenders from the Netherlands, Jean Asselborn from Luxemburg and Jean-Marc Ayrault from France, from left, walk through the park of the Foreign Ministry’s guest house Villa Borsig during a meeting to talk about the so-called Brexit in Berlin, Germany, Saturday, June 25, 2016.

So the outrage was palpable at Westminster on Monday as Parliament met for the first time since Thursday, when Britons voted – by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent – to leave.

Of course, no one really knows the exact impact the unprecedented “leave” vote will have on the global economy, but that itself is a problem. The negotiations can last two years, or longer if an extension is requested and granted.

Many global banks use Britain as a springboard for their business throughout the EU.

While those who argued for Britain to leave the European Union said the financial industry would thrive without European Union shackles, some of its biggest employers, including JPMorgan, are scouring Europe to find new locations for their traders, bankers and financial licenses.

Prime Minister David Cameron quickly resigned, saying it would be up to the new leader to negotiate with the EU.

Britain’s “leave” campaigners have been accused of lacking a plan for the aftermath of a victory, and Johnson and other Brexit leaders were keeping quiet Saturday. After an emergency meeting on Saturday, Japan’s finance minister Taro Aso said that he has been instructed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to take steps to stabilise the currency markets, if needed. “We were prepared for the unexpected and we are equipped for whatever happens”. The vote to pull out of the European Union makes an unpredictable world so much more so.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister said he hoped there would be no “cat and mouse” game.

The British government is scheduled to make a final decision this year on replacing the four aging submarines that carry its Trident intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles, a program that could cost as much as $167 billion. Even within the sharply divided Conservative Party, a majority of lawmakers did not want to leave the 28-nation bloc.

Cameron will first sit down with EU President Donald Tusk, before the European Council meets later in the day. “And that is no reason to be in a way especially nasty during the negotiations, but that must be properly dealt with”, Merkel added.

“There is no time to lose”, Hollande said in a joint press conference with Merkel and Renzi. Yet the Leave campaign was able to advance an anti-immigration agenda driven by divisive identity politics and an outdated vision of who belongs in Britain and who doesn’t. He tweeted: “David Cameron was quite right”.

“We can not start some sort of informal talks without having received the notice from Great Britain”. Marine Le Pen, who leads France’s far-right nationalist Front National, is now calling for France to have its own European Union referendum.

The referendum has triggered political and financial turmoil around the world.

So it’s no wonder that the world’s markets reacted violently Friday after the results came in the wee hours of the London morning.

Credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded the U.K.’s economic outlook from stable to negative, saying Britain faces “a prolonged period of uncertainty… with negative implications for the country’s medium-term growth outlook”.

Faced with the prospect of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Féin, the Irish political party that has been fighting for a united Ireland for decades, will undoubtedly push for a vote on Northern Ireland’s independence from the U.K. Sinn Féin said Friday that the British government has “forfeited any mandate to represent the economic and political interests of people in Northern Ireland”.

Britain lacks a written Constitution, and although the 2015 law that set up the referendum envisioned that it would be definitive, most legal scholars agree that Parliament could simply disregard it, if it wanted to.

Grieshaber reported from Berlin.