UK commissioner to EU resigns following Brexit vote

LONDON

Britain's European Union commissioner Jonathan Hill has announced his resignation on Saturday.

“As we move to a new phase, I don't believe it is right that I should carry on as the British Commissioner as though nothing had happened,” he said in a statement published on the European Commission’s website. “In line with what I discussed with the President of the Commission some weeks ago, I have therefore told him that I shall stand down.”

Lord Hill, Britain’s most senior diplomat in Brussels, also expressed his disappointment regarding the result of the referendum.

“I will leave it certain that, despite its frustrations, our membership was good for our place in the world and good for our economy. But what is done cannot be undone and now we have to get on with making our new relationship with Europe work as well as possible,” he added.

U.K. citizens voted to leave the EU in a historic referendum Thursday, where almost 52 percent of voters rejected their country's 43-year EU membership.

Foreign ministers of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg called on the British government to leave the union “as soon as possible” after a two-hour long meeting in Berlin Saturday.

While EU’s leading member states demand that exit talks to begin, the British government has signaled that it would only start negotiations after October when the country finds a new leader.