LONDON (AP) – As a separate couple still living together, the UK and the European Union have spent 2020 fighting and wondering if they can remain friends.
On Thursday, Britain finally moves. At 23:00, London time – midnight at the EU headquarters in Brussels – Great Britain will leave the bloc of the 27 nations economically and practically, 11 months after the official political departure.
After more than four years of Brexit political drama, the day itself is somewhat anticlimax. Blockade measures in the UK to combat coronavirus have restricted mass gatherings to celebrate or mourn the moment, although Parliament’s huge Big Ben bell will ring as it prepares to ring in the New Year.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – for whom Thursday marks the fulfillment of his promise to “make Brexit” – said the day “marks a new beginning in our country’s history and a new relationship with the EU as their biggest ally”.
“This time has finally come and now is the time to seize it,” he said after the UK Parliament approved an UK-EU trade agreement overnight, the UK’s last formal hurdle before it left.
It has been four and a half years since the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the bloc it joined in 1973. The United Kingdom left the EU’s political structures on 31 January 2020, but the repercussions of this decision have not yet been felt. what the UK’s economic relationship with the bloc has remained unchanged during an 11-month transition period ending on Thursday.
After that, Britain will leave the vast single market and the EU customs union – the biggest economic change the country has undergone since World War II.
A free trade agreement on Christmas Eve after months of tense negotiations will ensure Britain and the EU in the 27 nations can continue to trade goods without tariffs or quotas. This should help protect the £ 660 billion ($ 894 billion) in annual trade between the two sides and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that rely on it.
But companies are facing paperwork for new documents and expenses. Traders are struggling to digest the new rules imposed by a 1,200-page agreement that was agreed just a week before the changes take place.
The Channel Dover port and the Eurotunnel route for passengers and cargo are ready for delays, although the pandemic and holiday weekend mean there will be less cross-Channel traffic than usual. The vital supply route was growled a few days after France closed its border for trucks in the UK for 48 hours last week in response to a rapidly spreading variant of the virus identified in England.
The British government insisted that “the border systems and infrastructure we need are in place and we are ready for the new beginning of the United Kingdom.”
But freight companies are holding their breath. The British transport company Youngs Transportation suspends services to the EU from Monday to January 11 “to let things settle”.
“We think it gives the country a week or so to get used to all these new systems in and out, and we can take a look and hope to resolve any issues before we send our trucks,” said Youngs director Rob Hollyman.
The services sector, which accounts for 80% of the UK economy, does not even know what the rules will be for EU business in 2021 – many details have not yet been taken into account. Months and years of further discussions and arguments about everything from fair competition to fish quotas, the UK is expected to And the EU is settling into their new relationship as friends, neighbors and rivals.
Hundreds of millions of individuals in the UK and the bloc are also undergoing change to their daily lives. After Thursday, British and EU citizens automatically lose their right to live and work in each other’s territory. From now on, they will have to comply with immigration rules and obtain work visas. Tourists will not need visas for short trips, but the new headaches – from travel insurance to pet papers – are still waiting for Britons visiting the continent.
For some in the UK, including the Prime Minister, it is a moment of pride, a demand for national independence from a vast bureaucracy in Brussels.
Conservative MP Bill Cash, who has campaigned for Brexit for decades, said it was a “victory for democracy and sovereignty”.
For others, it is a time of loss.
Roger Liddle, a member of the House of Lords in the opposition Labor Party, said Brexit had separated Britain from “the most successful peace project in history”.
“Today is a victory for a poisonous nationalist populism over rule-based liberal internationalism and it is a very bad and very painful day for me,” he said.
This sentiment was echoed by the French Minister of Europe, Clément Beaune.
“It’s a historic day, it’s going to be sad,” he told LCI.
“But we must look to the future. A series of lessons from Brexit must be drawn, starting with lies, I think, that have been told to the British. And we will see that what has been promised – a kind of total freedom, a lack of restrictions, of influence – I think will not happen. “
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John Leicester of Le Pecq, France, contributed to this story.
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