PARIS: Europe’s press was awash with gloom and doom over Brexit on Saturday, warning that it was a boon for nationalists while urging EU leaders to meet the challenge of their rendezvous with history. A cartoon in the Dutch paper AD Haagsche Courant styled after Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ showed German, Dutch and British leaders howling in horror and holding their hands to their faces. “It’s not an exaggeration to call it a disaster,” Spain’s El Pais daily said in an editorial about Britons voting to leave the European Union in Thursday’s referendum. It urged EU nations to offer their citizens ‘ideas, plans, real leadership,’ adding that only then could the EU be saved from the dangerous abyss it has reached. “A black day for Europe – OUTCH!” was the banner headline of the German daily Bild, while Spain’s El Mundo ran a cartoon showing the Beatles crossing Abbey Road towards an abyss. “The Brexit shock will have profound geopolitical implications,” said an editorial in Italy’s leading Corriere della Sera and further added, “The European project will not be the same and the role of Europe in the world will inevitably be reshaped.” Corriere called the UK referendum result a ‘blow to Europe’ and said that it marked the end of a period of optimism and cooperation in European history that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Europe is a common home that is on fire,” said Laurent Joffrin of France’s left-leaning daily Liberation and added, “Its leaders have a rendezvous with history.” He said Britons had voted with their pocketbooks and their disaffection was shared across the EU. “The demographics of the votes leave no doubt: the poorer and older you are in Great Britain, the more you reject the European project,” Joffrin said. “Workers across the continent don’t believe in it anymore. They are turning towards their national identities as the only credible rampart against the excesses of globalisation.” Die Welt chastised German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her role in fanning anti-immigration sentiment, saying she ‘contributed to it significantly with the times she went it alone with her refugee policy.’ – ‘Chain reaction’ – “Populism could doom several EU leaders facing elections,” said Italy’s Il Fatto Quotidiano under the headline ‘Now everyone is scared’. ‘The anti-establishment wave risks sweeping away Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Spain’s elections on Sunday’, it said. A chain reaction could follow that would doom Italy’s Matteo Renzi in an October referendum as well as the French and German leaders, who face elections next year, the paper said. Austrian daily Die Presse warned against criticising political elites in the aftermath of Brexit, to which journalist Rainer Nowak said, “It is a new victory of the underdogs over the decadent establishment but things cannot work without elites at a decision-making level,” he said and added, “(Rejecting) experts, universities, high culture, thinkers and debate would be bad for everyone, not just Europe.” Many editorialists saw the break with Britain as a watershed, with Jerome Fonglio of France’s leading daily Le Monde saying it should prompt ‘deep thought about what (the EU) should be and the direction it should take’. Italy’s left-leaning La Repubblicca called on the youth of Europe to revitalise the European project. “Europe belongs to you,” said a front-page headline. “Don’t let the peddlers of fear win.” Philippe Gelie of France’s right-leaning daily Le Figaro slammed EU leaders for failing to plan for a possible Brexit. “The crisis sparked by the British divorce requires sang-froid and intelligence,” he said, while warning that the bloc has become too unwieldy with 28 and soon 27 members. In the end, Herve Favre of France’s La Voix du Nord wrote, “Maybe one day we will thank our English friends for delivering the shock treatment that resuscitated the European patient.”