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Original title: Britain and the European Union are about to announce a Brexit trade deal. Britain makes concessions on fishing. Source: Sina Finance
The UK and the European Union are about to unveil a landmark post-Brexit trade deal, and negotiators are still working through the night to finalize the fishing rights compromise plan.. This agreement will see the official completion of the four and a half years of Brexit since the 2016 British referendum. The agreement will cover commodity tariffs and quota-free trade, as well as cooperation in areas ranging from security to aviation. While the framework of the agreement has been reached on Wednesday, the announcement is currently expected to be announced on Thursday morning. The chief negotiators are still at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels to negotiate the exact wording of the final agreement.
People familiar with the matter said this is not expected to cause the deal to fail. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Von der Lein were scheduled to hold a press conference on Christmas Eve.
The British cabinet held a conference call on the negotiations on Wednesday night, and European governments also heard reports from Brussels officials. The final deal has yet to be approved by Johnson and the EU governments and both parliaments.
Johnson met with Von der Lein in Brussels, Belgium, on December 9.
Johnson and Von der Lein have personally weighed in in recent days, and the two have spoken on the phone several times, rushing to make a final fight for a deal before Britain leaves the EU single market later this month.
An EU diplomat stated that the UK had made concessions on fisheries issues that hampered the deal in recent hours. According to two people familiar with the matter, Johnson has agreed to the EU plan to reduce the value of fish caught in British waters by 25% in five and a half years. The UK’s initial request was that the value of fish caught by the EU would be reduced by 80% within three years, but the UK’s proposal in recent days is to reduce it by 30%.
According to officials with knowledge of the situation, the European Union had previously refused to accept a plan to reduce the value of the fish caught by more than 25%, saying that even so, it would be difficult for countries like France and Denmark to accept it.
The reduction of the value of the catches will be carried out step by step over a period of five and a half years. The time previously granted by the United Kingdom was three years, while the European Union required ten years.
Pound hike
The pound rose 1% to $ 1.3498 against the dollar, the biggest gain in nearly seven weeks.
If the two sides do finally reach an agreement, it will end the nearly five-year negotiations since the 2016 Brexit referendum and lay the foundation for future trade and cooperation between the UK and the EU.
As Brexit draws to a close, a new mutated corona virus has put most of England under lockdown. Hundreds of trucks were congested near the port of Dover in southern Britain, a reminder of the consequences of failing to reach an agreement when the Brexit transition period ends on December 31.
The two sides have viewed the negotiated fishing deal as a prerequisite for reaching a trade deal, although each year EU vessels fishing in British waters are only worth 650 million euros (790 million US dollars) , which is the tip of the iceberg of 512,000 million euros of goods exchanged between the two parties.
If the British government restricts the EU’s access rights to its waters after the fisheries transition period, the EU hopes to impose tariffs on the UK. In the latest compromise plan, the UK stated that it will accept the fishing tariffs required by the European Union, but will not accept tariffs in other areas such as energy.
