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Brexit Isn’t Like Just Leaving a Golf Club, EU Court Judge Warns

Comments come as U.K., European negotiators work to clinch Brexit deal as May plans a last-minute dash to Brussels.

Brexit Isn’t Like Just Leaving a Golf Club, EU Court Judge Warns
The head of an TaylorMade Driver M1 golf club rests beside a teed up TaylorMade Tour Preferred X golf ball on the golf course at the TaylorMade center of excellence, operated by Adidas AG, in Herzogenaurach, Germany.(Photographer: Martin Leissl/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Britain’s exit from the European Union shouldn’t be likened to leaving a golf club, the U.K.’s judge at the bloc’s second-highest court said, pointing to the “extraordinary turbulence” his country is suffering.

“We’re told that Brexit, just leaving, will be like leaving a golf club because the showers aren’t clean enough,” Ian Forrester, a Scottish judge at the EU General Court in Luxembourg, told a legal event in London on Wednesday night. “I don’t agree with that proposition.”

“Our country is going through a period of extraordinary turbulence and uncertainty,” said Forrester and Brexit shouldn’t happen “until a number of matters have been addressed which are deeply important for our daily lives.” These go from people’s movement rights to how extraditions and judicial cooperation will be handled in the future, to international trade and labor law issues, he said.

His comments come as U.K. and European negotiators are working to clinch a Brexit deal as Prime Minister Theresa May plans a last-minute dash to Brussels. They also come just days before the EU’s top court is set to review whether Article 50, which triggered the U.K.’s two-year Brexit process last year, can be reversed unilaterally.

To contact the reporters on this story: Stephanie Bodoni in Luxembourg at sbodoni@bloomberg.net;Kaye Wiggins in London at kwiggins4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman

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