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Negotiations to finalize a Brexit trade deal are completed, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen describes the deal as fair, balanced and correct.
After ten months of tortuous negotiations, Ms Von der Leyen told a press conference: “We have finally reached an agreement.
“It was a long and winding road, but we have a good deal in the end. The single market will be fair and will remain so.”
Shortly after, speaking from Downing Street, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the deal will allow the UK to “regain control.”
Johnson said, “We have regained control of our laws and our destiny. We have regained control of every jot and tittle of our regulation in a complete and unrestricted manner.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the government “will consider the details of the text very carefully.”
Mr Martin said: “From what we have heard today, I think it represents a good compromise and a balanced result.”
Taoiseach @MichealMartinTD gives the Irish Government’s reaction to the news that a #Brexit an agreement has been reached between the UK and the EU. @rtenews pic.twitter.com/3F82n4uXxk
– Pascual Sheehy (@PaschalSheehy) Dec 24, 2020
The final 2,000-page deal was delayed by a last-minute dispute over fisheries, as both sides haggled over the access EU fishermen will have to British waters after the end of the year.
Following the announcement of the political agreement, Mrs Von der Leyen’s Commission will send the text to the EU member states.
They are expected to take two to three days to analyze the agreement and decide whether to approve its provisional implementation.
The UK parliament will meet again next Wednesday to try to ratify the deal, less than 48 hours before the deal goes into effect, officials said.
“The president has granted a request from the government to withdraw the House at 9.30 (am) on December 30, 2020 for MPs to debate the legislation to give effect to the Agreement with the EU in UK law,” said the House of Commons in a statement. .
Once the text is approved and published in the official EU gazette, it will enter into force on January 1.
The European Parliament will then have the opportunity to approve the deal retrospectively, sometime in 2021, EU officials said.
With Britain out of the EU single market and customs area, traders will still face a battery of new regulations and delays.
Economists expect both economies, already weakened by the coronavirus epidemic, to be hit as supply chains are disrupted and costs rise.
But the threat of a return to tariffs will have been removed and relations between the former partners will be built on a more secure foundation.
It is also a success for Ms Von der Leyen and her chief negotiator Michel Barnier, who led nearly ten months of intense talks with Britain’s David Frost.
EU countries were concerned that if such a large rival at their doorstep deregulated their industry, their companies would face unfair competition.
And the members refused to give up access to Britain’s rich fishing waters, which support fleets in France, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.
European Union fishing fleets will have to give up a quarter of their current catch in British waters over the next five and a half years, authorities said.
At the beginning of the negotiations, Britain was pushing for an 80-60% cut in the EU’s share, gradual in just three years.
Johnson said the deal meant Britain could “catch and eat quite prodigious amounts of extra fish.”
In making a statement after the negotiations were completed, von der Leyen said that with so much at stake it was a deal worth fighting for.
She said: “First of all, competition in our single market will be fair and will continue to be fair.
“EU rules and standards will be respected. We have effective tools to react if fair competition is distorted and affects our trade.
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Second, we will continue to cooperate with the UK in all areas of mutual interest, for example in the field of climate change, energy, security and transport.
“Together, we continue to accomplish more than we do separately.
“And third, we have secured five and a half years of predictability for our fishing communities.”
A Downing Street source said: “The deal is done. We have regained control of our money, borders, laws, commerce and our fishing waters.”
“The deal is fantastic news for families and businesses everywhere in the UK. We have signed the first free trade agreement based on zero fees and quotas ever achieved with the EU.”
“We have delivered this great business for the whole of the UK in record time and under extremely challenging conditions, protecting the integrity of our domestic market and Northern Ireland’s place within it,” said the source.
Read more:
EU-UK relations: a new relationship, with big changes
Earlier, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said that despite a last-minute setback in the Brexit talks, the expectation was that a deal would be reached today.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr. Coveney said that “there is a kind of last minute problem” related to the “small text” of a fisheries agreement.
Coveney said it is a deal that will involve more than 2,000 pages of legal text.
He said it will not be a disaster for Irish fisheries, but that Brexit was not going to end without some impact on fisheries, adding that Ireland had set clear targets to protect itself and hoped they would be achieved in the deal.
Last night, both Mr. Johnson and Ms. Von der Leyen were also scheduled to make televised statements that a last minute deal had been struck.
However, both statements were postponed and today was seen as the last point at which an agreement can be provisionally applied on January 1.
The last-minute deal comes just days before the UK leaves the EU single market at the end of the year, sparing the two sides trade tariffs.
Read the latest stories about Brexit
Brussels was ready to negotiate until the end of the year, or even “beyond”, as suggested by Mr Barnier, but time was running out for any agreement to be applied provisionally.
Britain and France got a preview of what chaos could look like this week when France abruptly closed its borders to British trucks, trains and planes.
Paris was responding to concerns about the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus in Britain, but huge truck queues and threats of supply shortages were taken as an ominous sign.
AFP of additional reports
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