EU Trade Chief Hopes for Brexit Clarity to Reassure Business

(Bloomberg) -- EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said she hopes for clarity on Brexit in the coming weeks and an agreement on a transition period in which the U.K. would remain in the customs union.

“We need certainty and I hope that things in the coming weeks will be clarified,” Malmstrom said Friday on French radio France Info. The U.K. temporarily remaining in the customs union would give companies some certainty and time to prepare, she said.

Still, she said that Brexit will ultimately be bad for European and British business because there won’t be “trade without limits.”

“The whole process worries me of course. We are sorry our British friends decided to leave us and it’s true that these two years have been rather complicated,” she said.

--With assistance from Zoe Schneeweiss.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Horobin in Paris at whorobin@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Fergal O'Brien at fobrien@bloomberg.net

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