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The country will now not fall off a trade “cliff edge” on January 1, avoiding a mountain of damaging tariffs and quotas.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson attends a virtual press conference at 10 Downing Street in central London on December 19, 2020. Image: AFP
LONDON (AP) – Britain is gearing up for a new chapter on Friday after securing a trade deal with the European Union after a hard-fought Brexit when EU envoys met to discuss a deal reached only after months of tortuous negotiations. .
The country will now not fall off a trade “cliff edge” on January 1, avoiding a mountain of damaging tariffs and quotas.
But major changes are inevitable, as Britain leaves the EU single market for good and free movement with the bloc comes to an end after almost half a century of integration.
“We must not underestimate the economic impact that Britain will experience,” a European diplomat told AFP.
Britain was in a stalled transition period, still subject to the bloc’s rules since it formally left the EU on January 31.
Standing in front of a Downing Street Christmas tree in a video message Thursday night, Prime Minister Boris Johnson bragged the hundreds of pages of text as “a” good deal for all of Europe “and a” gift “for Britain.
The speech was “a victory speech,” Anand Menon, UK director in a Changing Europe think tank, told AFP.
“Boris Johnson was elected prime minister to achieve Brexit, now he definitely achieved Brexit,” Menon said.
Johnson has come under heavy criticism for his handling of the country’s coronavirus outbreak, which has so far left nearly 70,000 dead, the highest death toll in Europe.
In recent days, thousands of trucks have been backed up at Channel ports, after France and other European partners blocked the crossings over growing cases of a new variant of the virus believed to spread faster.
With ferry crossings and tunnels unusually open on Christmas Day and British soldiers testing for viruses, there were signs that the traffic jam cleared on Friday.
Some had pointed out that the transportation chaos, which sparked fears of shortages of fresh produce, could be a glimpse of what awaited the country if it left the EU single market without a deal.
FISHERMEN’S FEARS
The EU has offered Britain unprecedented tariff and quota-free access to its single market of 450 million consumers.
But in return, he has secured London’s commitment to abide by its ever-evolving rules in some areas such as environmental protection, labor regulation and tax, with the aim of preventing Britain from undermining businesses within the bloc.
The UK is also committed to ensuring that it will not abuse state aid to businesses to seek an unfair advantage.
The fish issue emerged as the latest hurdle this week as London pushed to reduce the share of EU fishing fleets in the estimated 650 million euro (£ 586 million, $ 790 million) annual haul by more than a third.
The final agreement established a 25 percent cut that will be implemented gradually over a period of five and a half years.
EU officials have vowed to support their fisheries sector through painful cuts, one of the main downsides of a deal that European Commission Director Ursula von der Leyen generally called “fair and balanced”.
British fishermen also received the agreement with “frustration and anger,” the head of the industrial federation, Barrie Deas, told the PA news agency.
With the agreement now shared with the 27 member countries of the bloc, its ambassadors met in Brussels on Christmas Day.
After the initial meeting, “member states will now begin a preliminary review” of the 1,246 pages of the legal text of the agreement that “will take a few days,” tweeted Sebastian Fischer, spokesman for the ambassadors meeting.
‘RELIEF INSTEAD OF CELEBRATION’
For Britain, “that an agreement has been reached is in many respects a remarkable achievement,” judged the Times newspaper.
However, the final package is “a source of relief rather than celebration,” he added, with new restrictions including an end to free movement in the UK for European workers and in the EU for British workers.
Young people will be affected by Britain’s withdrawal from the Erasmus student exchange program, which spans the entire continent, to be replaced by a local scheme named after pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing.
“The deal is not the end of the process. Now that (Johnson) has delivered on his promise to achieve Brexit, his challenge is to achieve it,” the Times warned.
The left-leaning Guardian was more severe, saying “Johnson deserves no credit for dodging a calamity that was coming so close because he drove so enthusiastically towards it.”
In fact, the newspaper added, the deal “prescribes an immediate downgrade for the UK economy.”
And for Britain’s heavyweight financial sector, “in the long run, the reality of Brexit will be to follow EU rules or self-isolation,” the EU diplomatic source said.
British MPs will debate the deal on Wednesday, but there is little doubt that it will pass after the opposition Labor Party pledged its support.
On the European side, the provisional approval of national capitals must be followed by a vote in the European Parliament in early 2021.
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