Exit will not come "at a discount or at zero cost", he said in a speech to the Belgian Federal Parliament. [...]
Mr Juncker's comments came as the House of Lords held a second day of discussion of the government's European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, which, if passed into law, will allow Prime Minister Theresa May to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, allowing formal talks with the EU to start. [...]
In his speech, Mr Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg, said: "It will be a tough negotiation which will take two years to agree on the exit terms. And to agree on the future architecture of relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union we will need years.
"The British people have to know, they know already, that it will not be at a discount or at zero cost. The British must respect commitments they were involved in making. So the bill will be, to put it a bit crudely, very hefty."
But an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was "not very smart" of the European Commission to ram home the cost of Brexit at this stage.
Stephan Mayer, a CDU member of the German Parliament, told the BBC that while Brexit would be "expensive for both the UK and the EU", much would depend on which EU programmes the UK continued to participate in.
"I am not so happy with this aggressive line," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
"I am convinced that Germany has a special interest in stable and good relationships with the UK. I fear in a certain way that this harsh pressure, which is put by the European Commission on the UK, is not in Germany's interests." [...]
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