Obama dismisses global reaction to UK’s exit from EU as ‘hysteria’

US President Barack Obama has dismissed the global reaction to Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU) as “hysteria.”

Obama said in an interview on Tuesday he did not “anticipate that there is going to be major cataclysmic changes as a consequence of” last week’s historic referendum  in which British citizens voted to leave the EU, a bloc that the United Kingdom joined more than 40 years ago.

The US president said Europe will not change it fundamental values or international priorities following the Brexit vote, downplaying concern that Britain leaving the EU was a sign of larger nationalist sentiments across the continent.

“I would not overstate it. There has been a little bit of hysteria, post Brexit vote,” Obama said. “As if somehow NATO is gone and the transatlantic alliance is dissolving and every country is rushing off to its own corner. That's not what's happening.”

Obama said UK citizens, who were frustrated with EU bureaucracy, just pressed the “pause button” on European integration.

He predicted that after leaving the EU, Britain would end up with a situation similar to Norway, which is not a member of the 28-nation bloc but aligns itself on “almost every issue with Europe and us.”

“I think this will be a moment in which all of Europe says: 'All right, let's take a breath and let's figure out how do we maintain some of our national identities, how do we preserve the benefits of integration and how do we deal with some of the frustrations that our own voters are feeling,'” Obama said.

“But the basic core values of Europe, the tenets of liberal, market-based democracies, those aren’t changing,” he added.

In the June 23 referendum, about 52 percent of British voters opted to leave the EU, while roughly 48 percent of the people voted to stay in the union. More than 17.4 million Britons said the country should leave the bloc, as just over 16.14 million others favored remaining in the EU.

Membership of the EU has been a controversial issue in the UK since the country joined the then European Economic Community in 1973.

Those in favor of a British withdrawal from the EU argued that outside the bloc, London would be better positioned to conduct its own trade negotiations, better able to control immigration and free from what they believe to be excessive EU regulations and bureaucracy.

Those in favor of remaining in the bloc argued that leaving it would risk the UK's prosperity, diminish its influence over world affairs, and result in trade barriers between the UK and the EU.

Speaking in Brussels on Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States will maintain special relationship with the United Kingdom in the wake of the Brexit.

Kerry called on EU members not to "lose their head" or be "revengeful" after Britain's decision to leave the bloc.

The top US diplomat also said that despite Britain's decision to leave the EU a "strong EU" remained vital for the United States.

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