Hard Brexit Canceled: Britain and EU Agree

Britain and the European Union, a few days before the final withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU, managed to prevent a sharp break in relations and agree on how to live, trade and cooperate from the first days of next year. The publication told more about this. with the BBC.

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The delegations led by Michel Barnier and David Frost, who had been trying to reach an agreement all this year almost to no avail and could not come to an agreement due to the basic principles of the future treaty, made a final breakthrough in recent weeks and nevertheless agreed on the text of the document.

UK government statement

“Everything that was promised to the British people in the 2016 referendum and general election has been delivered in this deal,” the British government said in a statement. “We have taken back control of our money, our borders, our laws, our trade, and our fishing waters.” We signed the first ever agreement with the EU based on zero tariffs and quotas. This is the largest bilateral deal signed by the parties. It regulates trade, the volume of which in 2019 amounted to 668 billion pounds ($906,5 billion).”

EU reaction

At a press conference in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the agreement fair and balanced.

“It was a long and winding road, but in the end we got a good deal. This is a fair, balanced deal that is right and responsible for both parties,” she said.

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The President of the European Commission emphasized that the time has come to turn this page and look to the future - the UK remains a reliable partner of the EU.

“I know this is a difficult day for some, and to our friends in the United Kingdom I want to say: parting is such a sweet sadness,” explained Ursula von der Leyen. “I say to all Europeans: it’s time to leave Brexit behind, our future is happening in Europe.”

“Four years of collective effort and unity of the European Union, determination to maintain peace and stability on the island of Ireland, protect the rights of citizens and the single market, and build a new partnership with Britain. “Thank you everyone,” added the head of the EU delegation to the negotiations, Michel Barnier.

Ursula von der Leyen told reporters that the EU was a strong point at this meeting, as a tough break would have hit 66 million Britain harder than the 450 million EU.

As a result, according to the President of the European Commission, the EU was able to achieve the adoption of an effective mechanism that would allow the parties to compete fairly in the single market and not try to provide their firms with advantages.

Intense negotiations

Now that the parties have come to an agreement, it must be discussed and preliminarily approved by the ambassadors of the EU countries in Brussels, after which the document will be approved by the European Council and the British Parliament. The agreement will enter into force on New Year's Eve, at the same time the UK will finally leave the EU.

The British House of Commons plans to ratify the agreement on December 30th. Opposition leader Kir Starmer has already announced that Labor will support the treaty.

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen have had intensive telephone conversations in recent days. They tried to resolve those issues that the delegates could not agree on.

The agreement concerns relations between the European Union and Britain in trade, transport communications, fishing, energy, as well as cooperation in the field of security and other areas.

If the agreement could not be drawn up, the EU and Britain would have to switch from January 1 to absolutely free movement of goods across the border to trade under the terms of the World Trade Organization, that is, with duties and quotas. This threatened big business losses on both sides.

The main subjects of controversy were several issues. The EU requires that Britain follow the organization's rules regarding government subsidies, labor protection, technological and environmental requirements for production, etc. This step was necessary to prevent British firms from gaining unfair, from the EU's point of view, advantages in competition on the continent. Secondly, they discussed fisheries, namely maintaining access for EU fishermen to British waters.

After all, the parties were able to agree on common rules for business in several stages. The details are unknown: the text of the document itself, several hundred pages in length, has not yet been seen by anyone except those directly involved.

But from the regular reports of Michel Barnier, the media managed to learn that in the end the parties abandoned the initial demand and came to a kind of "reactive mechanism".

According to this mechanism, the parties are entitled to respond with duties in specific industries if the partner tries to make life easier for their firms by means of subsidies, benefits or lower requirements for working and production conditions.

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In recent days, only the issue of fishing remained unresolved. As a result, the parties decided that during the transitional period (5,5 years) fishermen of the EU countries will retain the right to fish in British waters, but the volume is less than it was until now.

The main result of these agreements is that free, duty-free trade between Britain and the EU is preserved.

However, in trade, not everything will remain as it was: from January 1 between Britain and the EU, in any case, there will be a customs border with all the accompanying bureaucracy and costs.

At the last moment

The parties have long missed the deadline when the agreement could be approved "as expected", with ratification by all EU parliaments. The option remained with ratification only by the European Parliament.

The leader of the largest faction in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, said at the end of last week that if the agreement is not ready by Sunday, then the European Parliament will not have time to ratify it.

The only option left to the EU was to invoke Article 218(5) of the Treaty on European Union, according to which the European Council could temporarily implement an international agreement and leave ratification by all EU countries until later.

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But even for such a procedural option, the parties had to hurry up: the legal service of the European Council said that if the text of the agreement is not adopted before Christmas, December 25, then even its temporary entry into force from January 1 will not be possible.

Four years of controversy

The results referendum on leaving the EU were so unexpected that Britain was simply not ready for them. This was followed by about four years of negotiations, hesitation and disputes about how to live further, writes with the BBC.

It was originally planned that the exit from the EU will take place in April 2019, but this day has been repeatedly postponed: British parliamentarians could not accept the terms of Brexit and further cooperation with Brussels.

All this time, the fate of relations between Great Britain and the European Union remained uncertain, and opponents of Brexit repeatedly went to rallies demanding a second referendum.

However, the new Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who took office in July 2019, still promised to bring Brexit to its logical conclusion - and kept his promise.

In December 2019, early parliamentary elections were held in the country, the Conservative Party received an absolute majority of votes, and soon the deputies did what the parliamentarians of the previous convocation could not do for so long - approved the conditions for leaving the EU.

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