Commenting on the Whitehall leak about the Brexit worst-case scenario, the deputy chief spokeswoman for the commission, Natasha Bertaud, recalled that the UK failure to ratify the agreed withdrawal deal would mean that "all EU primary and secondary law will cease to apply to the UK from this moment onwards".
"This will obviously cause significant disruption both for citizens and businesses and it would have a serious negative economic impact … That would be proportionally much greater for the United Kingdom than it would be in the EU 27 member states", Bertaud added at a briefing.
The European Union is, meanwhile, "prepared for all eventualities", she added, noting however that the no-deal was "not a preferred outcome".
Bertaud also stressed that the bloc did not see "at this stage" any need for further measures in addition to those already taken by Brussels to protect the interests of the EU 27 from the no-deal fallout.
Since January 2019, the UK parliament has thrice rejected the divorce deal that was negotiated with Brussels by the Theresa May government. New Prime Minister Boris Johnson vows to take the country out of the European Union without "ifs and buts" by the 31st of October deadline unless the intransigent bloc agrees to renegotiate the contentious deal.