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The head of the Brexit party declares his fight to leave the EU. Meanwhile, Brussels is preparing to implement the Christmas Eve deal starting in January.
EU ambassadors speak during a special meeting at the EU headquarters.
Photo: Olivier Hoslet (Keystone)
After the historic agreement on a trade pact between the EU and Britain, there is great relief on both sides of the English Channel. As British Prime Minister Boris Johnson celebrated, preparations were underway in Brussels for a provisional application of the Christmas Eve deal from January.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier briefed the ambassadors of the 27 EU states on Friday on the outcome of the months-long tough negotiations. EU member states would now examine the 1,246 pages and “will continue this enormous task in the coming days,” a spokesman for the German presidency of the EU Council wrote on Twitter on Friday. Because Germany currently occupies the rotation of the presidency of the EU states, it had scheduled a meeting of ambassadors on short notice.
Chancellor Angela Merkel had already promised Thursday to examine the text quickly. The federal cabinet will agree on the German position by phone on Monday. “I’m very confident that we have a good result here.”
The EU and the UK agreed to a trade pact on Thursday after lengthy negotiations. The contract aims to regulate the relationship between both parties from January 2021 onwards. The most important point is to avoid tariffs, allow unlimited trade in both directions, and limit friction losses as much as possible. However, other points are also regulated, such as collaboration on security issues or participation in research programs.
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Since the agreement entered into force only eight days before the end of the transition period, there is no time for the European Parliament to ratify it. Therefore, the contract can initially only be applied provisionally. However, this still needs the approval of the 27 EU countries. EU ambassadors will vote on this in the coming days. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday. The EU Parliament should review the deal retrospectively in January. EU ambassadors unanimously decided on Friday to send a letter to the European Parliament highlighting the need for this extraordinary step, an EU diplomat said after Friday’s meeting.
In Britain, parliament must consider the treaty on December 30. There is hardly time for a detailed examination. Johnson need not fear a rebellion from his Brexit hardliners: he has a solid majority in parliament and the opposition Labor Party has announced that it will vote for the treaty as well. Even the head of the Brexit party, Nigel Farage, who until now had been anxious to see what he saw as the correct execution of the exit from the EU, gave his blessing to the agreement: it is not perfect, “but in general the war is past. “.
Johnson advised the British to read the complex work for the holidays. He recommends reading the commercial pact to anyone who wants to read something in this “moment of sleep after the Christmas meal,” he said jokingly in a Christmas video message posted on Twitter. He held up a thick sheaf of paper, which he declared as “good news.”
Brexit was the first step, the agreement is now “the festival”, as it says. “Full of fish, by the way,” Johnson added. Negotiations on EU fishermen’s access to UK territorial waters were one of the most sensitive issues, and this was the last to be resolved. Johnson had already shown himself to the press in a necktie decorated with fish on Christmas Eve.
“The war is over,” Nigel Farage tweeted, here during a speech to Brexit supporters in January 2020.
Photo: Neil Hall (Keystone)
From the British government’s perspective, the current agreement has achieved everything the British public wanted with the 2016 Brexit referendum. “We have regained control over our money, our borders, our laws, our trade and our fishing grounds,” he declared government. At the same time, the agreement guarantees exemption from customs duties and unlimited exports to the EU.
But the head of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also spoke of a good result that protects all the interests of the EU. After agonizing negotiations in recent months, Brussels is now demonstratively turning to other issues. “We can finally leave Brexit behind,” von der Leyen had already said on Christmas Eve.
The French government immediately made it clear on Friday that despite the deal, especially for the British, a lot will change: it insists on a massive inspection of British goods by the end of the year. “We have to control the British products that come to us,” Secretary of State for Europe Clément Beaune told Europe 1 channel on Friday. Food or industrial products must comply with all applicable regulations. The French state recruited some 1,300 people to guarantee these controls. France is a major hub for British products.
Also read our comment: A deal against chaos
The Brexit Commissioner of the EU Parliament, David McAllister, also expects “far-reaching consequences for people, businesses and public administrations” after Britain’s exit from the domestic market at the end of the year, as he told the ” world”. “Trade between the EU and the UK will no longer work as well as if we belonged to the internal market and the customs union together.”
The EU Commission made it clear at a table on Christmas Eve which advantages of EU membership Britain will have to give up in the future: EU programs like Erasmus, access to the Corona aid scheme, internal market for freight forwarders, fluid trade and that pets will have a passport in the future. are just some of the examples.
However, without the agreement, the consequences would have been much more dramatic. Then more complex customs duties and controls would have been necessary. Business representatives from both sides had warned of disruptions and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in this case.
