Carl Court/Getty Images(LONDON) — British Prime Minister Theresa May has provided a date for when the “Brexit” process is set to begin.
In an interview with BBC on Sunday, May said the deadline to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the action that occurs when a country decides to leave the Europe Union, would start by the end of March 2017. That is when the U.K. will formally notify the EU of its decision.
By triggering Article 50, the U.K. will begin a two-year process of withdrawal and negotiations.
May also promised a “great repeal bill” in the next Queen’s Speech, which would remove the European Communities Act of 1972 from the statute book, while also transferring all existing laws under EU into British law.
The prime minister will not ask parliament to repeal the European Communities Act until the U.K. has left the EU under Article 50.
“We are going to be a fully independent, sovereign country – a country that is no longer part of a political union with supranational institutions that can override national parliaments and courts,” May said in a speech at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Birmingham, England, according to BBC.
“And that means we are going, once more, to have the freedom to make our own decisions on a whole host of different matters, from how we label our food to the way in which we choose to control immigration.”
Copyright © 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.