"I think that it's in the interest of everybody that there is clarity about the process and the question and the decision [to hold an EU membership referendum] with all deliberate speed," Carney said in an interview with BBC radio.
When prompted to give a specific timetable for the EU exit bid, put forth by the recently reelected British Prime Minister David Cameron as a campaign pledge, the banking chief's response was "as soon as necessary."
Tapping into a growing wave of Eurosceptic and anti-migration sentiment in the country, Cameron promised to let Britons vote on whether or not to leave the 28-member bloc in the event of his Conservative Party winning the May 7 general election. Defying all predictions, the Tories won 331 of the House of Commons' 650 seats last Thursday, securing a comfortable majority and handing Cameron his second term in office.
Several business leaders and policymakers weighed in on the debate surrounding the EU referendum in the run-up to the general election. In mid-April, the chairman of the retail giant Tesco lamented the fact that many European businesses are reconsidering their London headquarters regardless of the referendum's results.
"We talk to a lot of bosses, and there has been an awareness of some of this political uncertainty — whether because of the election or the referendum. What they have been telling us, and we see it in the statistics, is that they have not yet acted on that uncertainty," Carney explained on Thursday.
The Conservatives' unexpected majority in last week's nationwide election gives Cameron a mandate to hold a referendum on the United Kingdom's secession from the European Union by 2017.
