Britain will start the formal divorce procedure to leave the European Union early next year and may not need two years to negotiate a deal, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Thursday.

 

Britain is under pressure to trigger Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty to start the formal procedure for the country to leave the bloc. After that, Britain will have two years to negotiate a deal.

 

"What we're doing is talking to our European friends and partners now in the expectation that by the early part of next year you will see an Article 50 letter, we will invoke that, and in that letter I'm sure we will be setting out some parameters for how we propose to take this forward," Johnson told Sky News television in New York.

 

"You invoke Article 50 in the early part of next year. You have two years to pull it off. I don't actually think we will necessarily need to spend a full two years but let's see how we go."