Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

EU Leaders Are Ready for Hard Brexit. EU Firms Aren’t.

The EU's political leaders might be well-prepared for a no-deal Brexit, but the bloc's business leaders aren't. That might help the U.K. prime minister.

February 7, 2019 at 6:30 AM UTC

By Leonid Bershidsky

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

It depends.
Photographer: David Cliff/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

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As Prime Minister Theresa May continues to bang her head against a hard Brussels wall, the probability that the U.K. will leave the European Union without an orderly separation agreement increases with every wasted day.

The biggest loser if that happens would be the U.K., but the EU countries also have a stake. They haven’t neglected preparations for a no-deal Brexit, but there appears to be a sizable gap in preparedness between governments and businesses, which are still having a hard time believing in a no-deal outcome.