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Brexit is becoming a reality: Britain finally closes its exit from the European Union at midnight on Thursday. Then, after a transitional phase of eleven months since leaving the EU, membership of the EU internal market and customs union will also end. At the end of the year there will be an economic divorce. At the last minute there was a deal for the British overseas territory of Gibraltar on New Years Eve.
“The fate of this great country is now firmly in our hands,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. “On December 31 at 11 pm (local time) a new beginning will begin in the history of our country and a new relationship with the EU as its closest ally. That moment has finally come and now is the time to seize it, ”he said. Johnson, who wanted to spend the historic hour with his family at his official residence in London’s Downing Street.
The British Parliament had passed Johnson’s ratification act a few hours before the turn of the year. The head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, approved the law with her “royal assent” on Thursday night. On New Year’s Eve, the contract was officially published in the EU legal bulletin. A spokesman for the German presidency of the Council of the EU announced that it could be applied provisionally from 1 January 2021 as planned. “A no-deal was avoided just in time,” he wrote on Twitter. On the EU side, there was not enough time for ratification in the European Parliament. That shouldn’t continue until spring.
After 47 years of membership, Britain left the EU at the end of January 2020. The trade and association agreement negotiated with the EU at the last minute is now aimed at avoiding a hard break. The most important point is that de facto tariffs and quantity restrictions will not apply to trade in goods in the future. In addition, the nearly 1,250-page contract regulates many other issues, including fisheries and cooperation in energy, transport, justice and police.
The European CSU politician Manfred Weber sees Brexit as a “lesson for the failure of the populists.” With the Brexit referendum and the election of US President Donald Trump, 2016 was “the climax of Twitter populism,” Weber said. “People feel in 2020 and 21 that this kind of policy is not working well.” However, EU states will not be immune from future divisions, said Weber, who is the leader of the European People’s Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament. “I also think that the impact of Brexit now is profound and that many have also learned how we have to deal with Europe, how we have to deal with each other.”
Agreement was reached on New Year’s Eve on a particularly difficult point: Spain and Great Britain agreed that the British overseas territory of Gibraltar would join the Schengen area, which is generally free of border controls. This will prevent the border between Spain and Gibraltar at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula from becoming an impervious external border of the EU as of January 1, 2021, said Spain’s Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya in Madrid. The general post-Brexit trade pact does not apply to Gibraltar. Instead, as a surprising consequence of Brexit, Gibraltar will now join Spain and the EU more closely. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 96 percent of Gibraltar’s 33,000 residents voted to remain in the EU.
Despite the post-Brexit trade pact, there are major changes on both sides at the turn of the year. For citizens, the ability to simply move is over. Visa-free travel will also be time-limited in the future. In future, controls will be necessary at the borders because the rules have to be checked, even for agricultural products.
In the English Channel, once Brexit is finally complete, no further traffic chaos is expected in the first days of January. “I’m sure everything will work out on January 1,” said John Keefe, head of Getlink, one of the train operators active in the Eurotunnel between Britain and France, according to the BBC broadcaster. “I don’t think the traffic will change. It will be stowed before the first or second week of January. This quiet initial phase allows everyone to prepare.”
Quiet traffic expected
Government circles also said quiet traffic was initially expected. Since the weekend is right after the New Years holidays, the dreaded queues could only add up afterward. The first logistics companies declared that they would delay their trips and observe the situation first.
A repeat of the chaos that was observed before and during Christmas in the Kentish border region must be avoided at all costs. Thousands of long-distance drivers had to wait in their trucks for days because France unexpectedly closed the border and required a negative corona test from all travelers. The reason was the appearance of a new variant of coronavirus, possibly very contagious, which had been discovered in the south of England.
