The end of the transition period, four and a half years after a majority in the UK voted to leave the European Union, is an important moment in the country’s history. After almost five decades as part of the bloc, the UK will now take a separate path.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday that Britain would be an ‘open, generous, outward, internationalist and free trade country’ that is ‘free to do things differently, and if necessary better’ than the EU.
“We have our freedom in our hands and it is up to us to make the best use of it,” Johnson said during his New Year’s speech, hours before the end of the transition period.
Opening the debate on the bill on Wednesday, Johnson told MPs that the agreement would open a new chapter and enable the UK to ‘take control of our laws and our national destiny’.
But critics warn that the British economy will suffer as a result of Brexit, with many businesses unprepared for the changes ahead, especially if the country stumbles under the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Now the UK has left the internal market and customs union, and goods crossing the border are subject to customs and other controls. Delays and disruptions can occur because carriers realize that they do not have the right paperwork, or that new software systems are collapsing under pressure.
Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labor Party, warned last week that ‘there are serious questions about the government’s readiness for the new arrangements’ after negotiations stalled.
He urged Labor lawmakers to support the bill rather than dumping the ‘devastating’ consequences of the UK out of the EU without a trade agreement. But Starmer said the ‘thin agreement’ reached by Johnson’s government did not provide adequate protection for UK manufacturing, our financial services, creative industries or workplace rights. ‘
The EU-UK trade agreement did not cover Gibraltar, the British overseas territory located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula.
Just hours before the deadline for the transition expired on Thursday, Spain and the United Kingdom announced that a separate draft agreement had been reached on the status quo after Brexit.
‘Time to put the Brexit behind us’
The European Parliament is expected to examine the agreement later before it can be formally ratified by the European Union.
The agreement reached with Brussels includes a new business and security relationship with the UK’s largest trading partner. It was eventually tracked down after months of deadlock over areas such as fishing quotas, how the UK would use state aid to support UK businesses after Brexit, and legal oversight of any deal.
The deal, which protects Britain’s tariff- and quota-free access to the bloc’s consumers, saves the UK from the most serious potential consequences of Brexit as it fights a crippling pandemic.
It also appears that the agreement mostly covers trade in goods, where the UK has a deficit with its neighbors in the EU, but excludes major service industries such as finance, where it currently enjoys a surplus.
Muted celebrations
Some British newspaper front pages sounded a triumph on Thursday, despite the possible rocky road ahead.
“Britain is FINALLY free from the EU,” the Daily Express quoted the Times of London as saying: “It is goodbye to everything that the Brexit trade agreement has signed.”
But the rising rates of coronavirus infections can be attributed to any hope of Brexit supporters celebrating the end of the transition period in British streets.
More than three-quarters of England’s population is now under the country’s strictest restrictions, aimed at limiting the spread of a new, more contagious coronavirus variant.
The news about the variant prompted France, along with other countries in Europe elsewhere, to end travel from the UK. As thousands of trucks were stranded in the British port of Dover in the run-up to Christmas, some observers feared it also predicted the possible chaos of a non-agreement Brexit.
Meanwhile, the full impact of Brexit on Britons living in the EU, as well as EU citizens living in Britain, has yet to be seen. The 3 million, a grassroots organization of EU citizens in the UK, have expressed concern about those who do not realize they have to apply to the EU settlement scheme by the end of June to protect their UK rights.
Gibraltar Agreement
Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told a television news conference on Thursday that the agreement in principle between London and Madrid would avoid a hard border between Gibraltar and Spain.
This was something that many locals on both sides of the border feared as the transition period ended, she said.
Gonzalez Laya said an interim period of six months is expected until a new treaty is finalized. Unlike the rest of the UK, Gibraltar remains part of EU agreements, such as the Schengen area, which allow for a free flow of people and goods across members’ borders.
“Spain will ultimately be responsible for the application of Schengen in Gibraltar,” Gonzalez Laya said.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the United Kingdom had “a warm and strong relationship with Spain”.
“Today, with the Prime Minister of Gibraltar, and after intensive discussions with the Spanish Government, we have agreed on a political framework to form the basis of a separate treaty between the United Kingdom and the EU regarding Gibraltar. send it to the European Commission to start negotiations on the formal treaty, ‘he said.
“Meanwhile, all parties are committed to mitigating the effects of the end of the transition period on Gibraltar, and in particular to ensuring the fluidity of the border, which is clearly in the best interests of the people living on both sides.”
CNN’s Vasco Cotovio, Ivana Kottasová and Niamh Kennedy contributed to this report.