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Europe is still the British destination
| Reading time: 2 minutes
“We will be the friend, ally and supporter of the EU”
After months of negotiations, the EU and Britain agreed on a trade deal. See the full statement by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson here.
The UK EU chapter ends on Christmas Eve 2020. As Boris Johnson humbly conjures up the future together, Ursula von der Leyen shows her teeth. The agreement is the beginning and the end at the same time.
meOn the last night and noon, the negotiators haggled over the last catch quotas at the Commission headquarters in Brussels. Then the writing was done: the European Union and the United Kingdom agreed to one of the largest and most extensive free trade agreements in the world.
The contract, which is worth 730,000 million euros per year, is much more than a financial agreement. It marks the final end of an almost 48-year era of British EU membership. The roads are parting and the future will show whether the seafaring nation will truly find happiness, as Boris Johnson and his Brexit supporters wish. If the kingdom will overcome the challenges of the 21st century more dynamically and successfully, independent of Brussels.
Ursula von der Leyen doubts it. Shortly before the party, the head of the EU Commission made it clear that the British were making a mistake with Brexit. The German has a different understanding of the great words of national sovereignty that have been echoed by Europeans from London since the 2016 Brexit referendum. Sovereignty, that is open borders and the opportunity to work, live, study and do business in the entire Union: “In a world of great powers to join forces and speak with a common voice.” No agreement in the world could change the true distribution of weight in the world, von der Leyen said. “And we are one of the giants.” The UK, alone and outside the EU, is gone, that is the message from Brussels when we leave.
“What we call the beginning is often the end. And finishing something means starting something, “von der Leyen quoted the poet TS Eliot. The British Prime Minister recorded this dance when it was made public in London shortly after. The agreement brings new certainty not only to the economy, but also to the British-European relationship, which was at times anything but harmonious. Unusually conciliatory, downright humble, was the man on Christmas Eve without whom Brexit 2016 probably wouldn’t have happened.
For Boris Johnson, the end of EU membership is a beginning in another way. On the one hand, he will now have to deliver everything he promised the British with the Brexit panacea. The fact that he had to make compromises for the deal and that London cannot avoid Brussels even after leaving the EU is another. Europe remains the British destination.
