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The final 2,000-page deal was delayed by a last-minute dispute over fisheries, as both sides haggled over the access EU fishermen will have to British waters after the end of the year.
The Head of the European Commission Working Group for Relations with the United Kingdom, Michel Barnier (L) and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen (R), attend a press conference on the Brexit negotiations at the EU headquarters in Brussels, on December 24, 2020. Image: AFP
BRUSSELS – The European Union and the United Kingdom reached a post-Brexit trade deal on Thursday to cushion the economic blow of Britain’s impending exit from the single market after 10 months of tortuous negotiations.
“A deal was made,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted.
“We have finally reached an agreement,” said the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
“It was a long and winding road, but we have a good deal at the end,” he said. “The single market will be fair and will continue to be so.”
Britain formally left the EU in January after a deeply divisive referendum in 2016, the first country to secede from the political and economic project that was born when the continent rebuilt after World War II.
London remains subject to EU rules during a transitional period that runs until midnight on December 31, when the UK will leave the single market and the bloc’s customs union.
The final 2,000-page deal was delayed by a last-minute dispute over fisheries, as both sides haggled over the access EU fishermen will have to British waters after the end of the year.
Following the announcement of the political agreement, the von der Leyen Commission will send the text to the EU member states.
They are expected to take two to three days to analyze the agreement and decide whether to approve its provisional implementation.
The British parliament will also have to interrupt its year-end holidays to vote on the deal before the December 31 deadline.
Once the text is approved and published in the official EU gazette, it will take effect on January 1, when Britain leaves the bloc’s single market.
The European Parliament will then have the opportunity to approve the deal retrospectively, sometime in 2021, EU officials said.
BATTERY OF NEW REGULATIONS
Assuming the process goes according to plan, the negotiating teams will have agreed on the gigantic deal in record time.
And the 11th hour deal avoids the threat that Great Britain could leave the club after 47 years of shared history with no follow-up rules.
With Britain out of the single market and the EU customs area, traders crossing the Canal will still face a battery of new regulations and delays.
Economists expect both economies, already weakened by the coronavirus epidemic, to be hit as supply chains are disrupted and costs rise.
But the threat of a return to tariffs will have been removed and relations between the former partners will be built on a more secure foundation.
It is also a success for Von der Leyen and his chief negotiator Michel Barnier, who led nearly ten months of intense talks with Britain’s David Frost.
After the 2016 referendum, in which British voters chose to leave the union, Brexit supporters bragged that they could win the “easiest trade deal ever”.
The argument was that after conducting business according to EU rules and regulations for so long, the economies would be a good fit with each other.
But European capitals were concerned that if such a large rival at their doorstep deregulated their industry, their companies would face unfair competition.
Brussels insisted that the only way to keep the land border between Ireland and the United Kingdom open was to keep Northern Ireland, a British province, within its customs union.
And the members refused to give up access to Britain’s rich fishing waters, which support fleets in France, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.
The fish issue emerged as the latest hurdle this week, when member states, led by France, rejected an offer from the UK.
London lobbied to reduce the share of EU fishing fleets in the estimated annual set of € 650 million by more than a third, with staggered changes over three years.
The EU, particularly countries with northern fishing fleets such as France, Denmark and the Netherlands, insisted on 25% for at least six years.
It is not yet clear what the figures are for the final deal, but European diplomats stressed that they would not have signed it unless the UK gave ground.
Barnier informed ambassadors and then high-level MEPs on Tuesday that he had made his last offer on fish and that it was now up to the political leaders.
This triggered a round of phone calls between Johnson and von der Leyen that led to the pre-Christmas engagement on Wednesday night.
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