The latest election shock is "yet another own goal" that will make "already complex negotiations even more complicated", said the European Parliament's top Brexit official, Guy Verhofstadt. "In my view it may well just be a period of transition", she told LBC radio.
Current Prime Minister Theresa May, leader of the conservative party remains in her post as she is forming a minority government with the help of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The DUP said only that it would enter talks.
"That was not the result that we secured".
With no clear victor emerging from the British parliamentary election, negotiations on Britain's departure from the European Union (EU) are likely to be delayed, while uncertainty looms over the direction Brexit would take, according to Dutch experts. Among the casualties was Alex Salmond, a former first minister of Scotland and one of the party's highest-profile lawmakers.
Noting the "crucial Brexit talks that begin in just 10 days", May said the new government will work to fulfill the will of United Kingdom voters who decided past year to leave the European Union. That has disappeared. If the DUP gets a sniff of a tariff border going up between Northern Ireland and the ROI, they'll walk and she will fall.
In Thursday's election the Conservatives won 318 of the 650 House of Commons seats, 12 fewer than the party had before the snap election, and eight short of the 326 needed for an outright majority.
The results confounded those who said Labour's left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was electorally toxic.
But May, facing scorn for running a lacklustre campaign, was determined to hang on.
Britain's Primer Minister Theresa May leaves Downing Street on her way to Buckingham Palace after Britain's election in London, Britain June 9, 2017. Many analysts said it was unlikely May could remain leader for long now that her authority has been eroded.
But hours later, DUP leader Arlene Foster said her party's support to keep May in office was not yet a done deal - publicly at least. Instead, she has left Britain's government ranks in disarray, days before the divorce negotiations are due to start on June 19. Labour, written off as nearly unelectable just weeks ago, surpassed expectations by securing 261 seats in a last-minute surge of support.
Rather, it was that Mrs May had called the election on the back of inflated expectations, thinking that her party's 21-point lead over Labour in opinion polls would translate into an electoral romp to 380-400 seats.
Saudi Arabia's King Salman and Vladimir Putin speak about Qatar crisis
Turkey and Qatar have developed close ties over the years and reached agreement in 2014 to set up a Turkish military base there. Qatar's Qatalum aluminium plant is now exporting metals via ports in Kuwait and Oman, as well as a Qatari container port.
EU Budget Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said it may now be possible to discuss closer ties between Britain and the EU than May had initially planned, given her election flop.
"The question is now whether a coalition government will make Britain a more constructive negotiating partner, perhaps moving away from the "hard Brexit" posturing of the past months, which does not seem to be the case", said Joris Larik, senior researcher at The Hague Institute for Global Justice. "Let's put our minds together on striking a deal", Michel Barnier said.
There was little sympathy for May from some Europeans.
Since taking power from David Cameron after his catastrophic Brexit snafu, Ms May had ruled out an election to gain a personal mandate.
Miles Celic, the chief executive of TheCityUK, Britain's most powerful financial lobby group, said the comments indicated the government plans to continue with its current strategy and that it retains a parliamentary majority to leave the EU.
One thing Thursday's results clarify is that there is no center in British politics.
Her Conservatives offered a "strong and stable" government. I said at the start this election was wrong.
May took a gamble in April by calling for the snap election.
Others predicted she would soon be gone.
But her campaign unravelled after a policy u-turn on care for the elderly, while Corbyn's old-school socialist platform and more impassioned campaigning style won wider support than anyone had foreseen. She sought to deflect pressure onto Corbyn, arguing he had a weak record on security matters.
"Britain will now go into its most important challenge in 40 years - extricating itself from the European Union - at a severe disadvantage", NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports from London.
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