German businesses losing patience with Brexit talks

FRANKFURT AM MAIN, Oct 14 (AFP): With just under six months until Brexit day, German business is losing patience with negotiations ahead of a vital deadline, warning ever 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 Tuesday, 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 84.4 billion euros ($97.4 billion) of exports to Britain in 2017, making the island nation its fifth-biggest customer, while importing 37.1 billion.

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.