General election: Westminster chaos will make Brexit more complicated, say European Union leaders

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Protracted delays in organising a negotiating position will weaken May's hand, a point reinforced by EU President Donald Tusk who reminded her of her boast that no deal was better than a bad deal when he said: "We don't know when Brexit talks start".

CNBC reports that the election resulted in a "hung Parliament", with UK Prime Minister Theresa May losing her parliamentary majority.

Andrius Kubilius, a former conservative prime minister of Lithuania, who sits on his country's Brexit committee, said May's juggling act to keep the alliance together made matters "much messier now".

Steven Blockmans of the Center for European Policy Studies said that because of the current chaos, "it is questionable whether that period of time will be sufficient in order to strike a good deal".

European Union states are getting impatient about the delays in the Brexit talks, with some warning Friday after Britain's inconclusive election that the country should not be given more than the allotted two years to settle its divorce.

"I don't think we should talk about some prolongation of the deadline", he said in Prague.

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Then in April the next Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, called an early election that she hoped would give her a bigger majority in parliament and a stronger negotiating position in the Brexit talks.

However, the inconclusive election result will further add to Europe's frustration.

The talks were set to officially begin on June 19.

The EU was hoping to kick off the talks to settle the rights of EU citizens living in the United Kingdom, and of Britons living elsewhere in the EU, agreeing a methodology to calculate Britain's financial commitments, and finding a solution to the question of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Once sufficient progress had been reached on these three issues, the negotiations would have moved on to the details of withdrawal as well as scoping out the future UK-EU relationship. "Maybe Britain will have to show greater flexibility in the negotiations."But EU officials question how any British government could persuade voters to accept a Norway-style package and so would be wary of starting down the path of negotiating it for fear of ending up without a deal that both sides could ratify in 2019".

No deal would also lead to a regulatory no man's land where standards wouldn't be recognised, and many products - including medicines - would no longer be accredited for sale.

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