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Many key aspects of the UK’s future relationship with the EU are still up in the air, experts warned, despite Downing Street hailing its Brexit deal as a “moment of national renewal.”
The 1,255-page document, released Saturday, left numerous questions unanswered about professional qualifications, asylum rights, financial services and other topics, they said.
The text also contains no less than 244 references to “arbitration tribunals” and 170 more to a “council of association”, the bodies that will decide the details and resolve future disputes, suggesting future negotiations.
Anton Spisak, a Brexit expert at the Tony Blair Institute, said 19 specialized committees and four task forces would hold at least 21 meetings each year, excluding the issues affecting Northern Ireland.
“I am amazed at how thin the deal is,” he said, adding: “This falls even below the standard of some recent EU FTAs.” [free trade agreements]. ”
Georgina Wright, Associate at the Institute of Government, said: “There is still a lot of information that is a bit vague. The text is so dense from a legal point of view and companies want to know practical measures. “
She said the UK could now “diverge at any time” but cautioned against countermeasures, adding: “That comes at a price. That runs through the entire deal.”
Among the issues not specified by the agreement sealed on Christmas Eve are:
* Financial services – with future rules “yet to be established”, admitted a government source, despite the sector employing more than 1 million people and paying more than £ 75bn in taxes.
* Professional qualifications in service jobs – without any agreement on their recognition in the EU, even though the UK enjoys a huge surplus in such exports.
* There is no agreement allowing the government to return asylum seekers to EU countries with the expiration of the Dublin Regulation, despite Priti Patel’s promise that it would be easier after Brexit.
* There is no data sharing agreement for the UK chemical industry, with a £ 1 billion bill to build its own database of approved products, with the level of cooperation undecided with the EU.
* The food industry protested the absence of an “equivalency” agreement, which left New Zealand with a closer deal, requiring fewer checks and less paperwork.
And David Allen Green, a lawyer and prominent Brexit commentator, pointed to “dozens and dozens of UK-EU conversation workshops” and said: “Welcome to the future, negotiations without end.”
The European Research Group (ERG) of conservative MPs backing Brexit said it was studying the text before deciding whether to vote against it on Wednesday, after having convened a self-described “star chamber” of lawyers.
“We are in the process of looking at it, said veteran Europhobe Bill Cash, adding:“ Sovereignty is the key issue. The CJD [European Court of Justice] it’s part of it. ”
In a message to conservative parliamentarians, the prime minister acknowledged that “the devil is in the details” of the deal, but insisted that it will resist ERG inspection.
David Frost, the chief negotiator for No. 10, has entered into “one of the largest and most comprehensive agreements in history” that would ensure that the UK “sets its own laws again”.
“The way we have achieved this is that there are no more functions for the Court of Justice of the European Union, there are no direct effects of EU legislation, there is no alignment of any kind, and we are outside the single market and outside. of the customs union as the manifest said we would be, “he said.
“This should be the beginning of a moment of national renewal for us. All options are in our hands as a country and now it is up to us to decide how we use them and how we move forward in the future.
But a former national security adviser warned that sharing vital crime-fighting data would be “slower and more clumsy” under the deal.
And the director of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organizations (NFFO) accused Mr Johnson of having “bottled” the fishing quotas, claiming only “a fraction of what the UK is entitled to under international law”.
“Lacking legal, moral or political influence on the fish negotiations, the EU made the entire trade deal conditional on a UK surrender on fisheries,” Barrie Deas said.
The proportion of fish in British waters that the UK can catch will increase from about half now to less than two-thirds at the end of a five-and-a-half-year transition.
