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After the historic agreement on a Brexit trade pact, the EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier briefed the ambassadors of the 27 EU states. The briefing of the French has started, wrote a spokesman for the German presidency of the EU Council on Twitter on Friday. EU member states would now examine the 1,246 pages of the agreement and “will continue this daunting task in the coming days.”
As there is no longer enough time for the EU to ratify the agreement, the provisions can initially only be applied temporarily. However, this requires the approval of all 27 EU countries.
The EU and the UK agreed to a trade pact on Thursday after months of negotiations. The contract aims to regulate the relationship between both parties from January 2021 onwards. The most important point is to avoid tariffs, allow unlimited trade in both directions, and limit friction losses as much as possible.
Reading under the Christmas tree
In Britain, Parliament must consider the treaty on December 30. There is hardly time for a detailed examination. Johnson need not fear a rebellion from his Brexit hardliners: he has a solid majority in parliament and the opposition Labor Party has announced that it will vote for the treaty as well.
Johnson advised the British to read the complex work for the holidays. If you want to read something in this “moment of sleep after the Christmas meal,” he recommends reading the commercial pact, he jokingly said in a Christmas video message posted on Twitter. He held up a thick sheaf of paper, which he declared as “good news.”
“Full of fish”
Brexit was the first step, the agreement is now “the festival”, as it says. “Full of fish, by the way,” Johnson added. Negotiations on EU fishermen’s access to UK territorial waters were one of the most sensitive issues, and this was the last to be resolved. Johnson had already shown himself to the press in a necktie decorated with fish on Christmas Eve.
control
The French government immediately made it clear on Friday that despite the deal, especially for the British, a lot will change: it insists on a massive inspection of British goods by the end of the year. “We have to control the British products that come to us,” Secretary of State for Europe Clément Beaune told Europe 1 channel on Friday. Food and industrial products must comply with all applicable regulations. The French state recruited some 1,300 people to guarantee these controls. France is a major hub for British products.
The Brexit representative of the EU Parliament, David McAllister, also expects “far-reaching consequences for individuals, businesses and public administrations” after Britain’s exit from the domestic market at the end of the year, as he told the ” world”. “Trade between the EU and the UK will no longer work as well as if we were part of the single market and the customs union together.”
Erasmus passed
The EU Commission made it clear at a table on Christmas Eve which advantages of EU membership Britain will have to give up in the future: EU programs like Erasmus, access to the Corona aid scheme, internal market for freight forwarders, fluid trade and that pets will have a passport in the future. are just some of the examples.
However, without the agreement, the consequences would have been much more dramatic. Then more complex customs duties and controls would have been necessary. Business representatives from both sides had warned of disruptions and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in this case. (apa, reuters)
