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Of: TT
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Photo: Aaron Chown / AP / TT
Tense waiting for the result of the negotiations for the British exit from the EU. Stock Photography.
The EU and the UK are expected to announce a trade deal on Christmas Eve, which will mitigate the effect of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. The question of future fishing rights is being negotiated until the end.
Despite negotiations throughout the year, the parties sat through the night trying to work out the final details. Signs of an imminent decision came first during the morning.
But now it is clear that the negotiations will continue until the afternoon.
Both sources within the EU and in the British government stated at 1:00 p.m. to the Reuters news agency that it may take several hours before the Brexit deal is ready. It is claimed that it is the question of future fishing rights that is causing the negotiations to drag on.
The gap is narrow but very deep, writes AFP. It’s about how much and how fast EU countries’ fishing in British waters should be reduced.
European stock markets reacted this morning with a price hike on signs that a deal was imminent.
Although a last minute agreement offers a better position than a blind divorce, it still separates the parties much further than was thought when the British voted to leave the EU four years ago, writes Reuters.
Longer distances
The UK formally left the EU on January 1 this year, but the transition period has largely meant that nothing has changed in practice for trade and travel.
If long negotiations now lead to zero tariffs and unchanged quotas, they have secured trade, which was worth around $ 1 trillion a year, and preserved the Northern Ireland peace deal.
But it still means that Europe’s second-largest economy is leaving the common market and the EU customs union.
The current deal concerns trade in goods but not financial services, the sector that has made London the only financial capital in the world that can compete with New York. The British economy is 80 percent driven by services.
Trading in goods will be surrounded by more rules and bureaucracy and will therefore cost more. Everything from food safety regulations to industry-specific certifications will change.
Put the fish down my throat
Difficult negotiations over several months have obviously been hampered by the crown pandemic and have also been interrupted by heated events in both London and Paris.
According to Reuters, Britain’s imports from the EU are worth about $ 107 billion more than exports there. Fishing issues were discussed in detail overnight, which is important to Britain’s small fishing fleet, but that sector still accounts for only 0.1 per cent of UK GDP.
BBC journalist Lura Kuenssberg tweeted on Christmas Eve morning that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had spoken by phone four times the day before and that the late-night negotiations they referred to specific species of fish.
“I did not invent this,” he explains.
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