LONDON (AP) – Still living together as a divorced couple, Britain and the European Union are battling 2020 and wondering if they can stay friends.
On Thursday, the UK is finally coming out. At 11pm – Midnight at the EU headquarters in Brussels – Britain 11 months after its political formal departure, Britain will leave the 27-nation part economically and practically.
More than four years after the Brexit political drama, that day itself is a matter of anticlimax. The UK’s lockdown measures to control the coronavirus have greatly reduced gatherings to celebrate or mourn the moment, although Parliament will prepare to ring the Big Bell bell in the new year.
“This is a new beginning in the history of our country and our biggest ally with the EU,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who represents Thursday’s “Brexit” promise.
“The moment is finally upon us and now is the time to seize it,” he said, adding that Britain’s parliament had approved the UK-EU trade deal overnight, followed by a final formal formal barrier to the UK before departure.
It has been 4/2 years since Britain voted in a referendum to leave the bloc in 1973. The UK abandoned EU political constructions on 31 January. During the 11-month transition period ending on Thursday, the UK’s economic ties with the bloc remained intact.
After that, Britain will leave the EU’s huge single market and customs union – the only major economic change in the country since World War II.
After months of tense negotiations, a free trade agreement on Christmas Eve will ensure that Britain and the 27-nation EU can continue to trade goods without tariffs or quotas. That would help secure 60 660 billion (89 894 billion) in annual trade between the two sides and hundreds of thousands of dependent jobs.
But payers face new paperwork and costs. Traders are struggling to digest the new rules imposed by the 1,200-page deal, which was agreed a week before the change took place.
The English Channel port of Dover and Eurotunnel are boring for passenger and freight delays, although epidemics and holiday weekends mean less cross-channel traffic than usual. The supply route was flooded for days after France closed its border to UK truckers for 48 hours a week in response to a rapidly spreading virus known in England.
The British government insisted that “the border systems and infrastructure we need are in place, and we are ready for a new beginning for the UK.”
But freight companies are holding their breath. UK Halaj Pay Firm Young Transportation is suspending EU services from Monday to January. 11 “Let things settle down.”
“We think it takes a week or so for the country to get in and out of these new systems and we can get a glimpse and hopefully before really sending our tricks,” said Rob Holliman, director of Youngs. We will be able to resolve any issues. “
Even the services sector, which accounts for 80% of Britain’s economy, does not know what the rules for business with the EU will be in 2021 – many details remain. From months and years of further debate and argument ranging from fair competition to fish quotas, Britain is ahead The EU compromises in their new relationship as friends, neighbors and rivals.
Millions of individuals and groups in Britain are also facing change For their daily lives. After Thursday, British and EU citizens lose the automatic right to live and work in another region. From now on, they will have to comply with immigration rules and get a work visa. Tourists don’t need visas for tourists, but new headaches – from travel insurance to pet paperwork – are still looming for Britons visiting the continents.
For some in Britain, including the Prime Minister, it is a moment of pride to achieve national independence from the huge Brussels bureaucracy.
Conservative MLA Bill Cash, who has campaigned for Brexit for decades, said it was a “victory for democracy and sovereignty.”
For others, it’s a time of loss.
Roger Liddell, a member of the opposition Labor Party in the House of Lords, said Brexit separated Britain from “the most successful peace project in history.”
“Today is the victory of the poisoned nationalists over liberal rule-based internationalism and it is very bad, and for me that day is very painful,” he said.
That sentiment was echoed by Clement Buen, France’s European minister.
“That day will be historic, tragic,” he told broadcaster LCI.
“But we also have to look to the future. Numerous lessons should be learned from Brexit, starting with the false, I think, it was told to the British. And we will see that what was promised – a kind of freedom, a lack of controls, an influence – I think will not happen. “
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John Leicester from Le Pકc in France contributed to this story.
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