German business loses patience with Brexit negotiations
At stake for the country are 50,000 jobs as separation of the UK from the EU without transitional agreement is still a possibility
With just under six months until Brexit day, German business is losing patience with negotiations ahead of a vital deadline, warning more stridently of the risks of a no-deal departure. "Europe must stop a worst-case Brexit scenario," Joachim Lang, director of the Federation of German Industry (BDI) said last week, warning that "a separation of the UK from the EU without a departure or transitional agreement or clarification of the future relationship is still a possibility". At stake for Germany are some 50,000 jobs the BDI says depend directly on business with the UK. In financial terms, Europe’s largest economy sold €84.4bn of exports to Britain in 2017, making the island nation its fifth-biggest customer, while importing €37.1bn. The scale means a no-deal Brexit would be "a disaster that would cause great difficulties for tens of thousands of firms and hundreds of thousands of workers on both sides of the English Channel", Lang said. Current talks aim to settle Britain’s divorce...
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