LONDON (AP) – Like a divorced couple still living together, Britain and the European Union wrestled in 2020, wondering if they could not remain friends.
Thursday, the UK finally pulls out. At 23:00 London time – midnight at EU headquarters in Brussels – Britain will leave the 27-nation bloc, economically and practically, 11 months after its formal political departure.
After more than four years of Brexit political drama, the day itself is an anticlimax. British closure measures to curb the coronavirus have curtailed mass rallies to celebrate or mourn the moment, though Parliament’s huge Big Ben bell will ring the bell when it’s ready for the new year lazy.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – for whom the fulfillment of his promise to represent ‘Brexit Done’ on Thursday represents the day ” a new beginning in the history of our country and a new relationship with the EU as their biggest ally . ‘
“This moment is finally at hand and now is the time to seize it,” he said after the British parliament overnight approved a trade agreement between the UK and the EU, the last formal hurdle to Britain. side before departure.
It has been 4 1/2 years since Britain voted in a referendum to leave the bloc it joined in 1973. The UK left the EU’s political structures on 31 January 2020, but the consequences of the decision have yet to be felt, 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 enormous internal market and customs union – the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II.
A free trade agreement concluded on Christmas Eve after months of tense negotiations will ensure that Britain and the EU can continue to trade goods with 27 countries without tariffs or quotas. This would protect the annual trade between the two parties and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that rely on it.
But companies are facing new paperwork 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.
Dover’s English Channel port and the Eurotunnel passenger and freight route are accelerating delays, although the pandemic and the holiday weekend mean there will be less cross-channel traffic than usual. The vital route was blocked for days after France closed its border to British truck drivers last week in response to a rapidly spreading variant of the virus identified in England.
The British government has insisted that ‘the border systems and infrastructure we need are in place, and that we are ready for the UK’s new start.’
However, cargo companies are holding their breath. British transport company Youngs Transportation will suspend EU services from Monday to January 11 “to get things right.”
“We think it’s giving the country a week or so to get used to all these new systems in and out, and we can look and hopefully solve any problems to really steer our trucks,” said Rob Hollyman, director of Youngs, said.
The services sector, which accounts for 80% of the UK economy, does not even know what the rules will be for business with the EU in 2021 – many of the details have yet to be set out. Months and years of further discussion and arguments on everything from fair competition to fish quotas lie ahead as Britain a and the EU comes to their new relationship as friends, neighbors and opponents.
Hundreds of millions of individuals in Britain and the bloc are also experiencing to their daily lives. After Thursday, Britons and EU citizens lose the automatic right to live and work in each other’s territory. From now on, they will have to follow immigration rules and get work visas. Tourists do not need visas for short trips, but new headaches – from travel insurance to paperwork for pets – still await Britons visiting the mainland.
For some in Britain, including the Prime Minister, it is a moment of pride, the recovery of national independence from a large Brussels bureaucracy.
Conservative lawmaker Bill Cash, who has been campaigning for Brexit for decades, said it was a “victory for democracy and sovereignty”.
For others, it is a time of loss.
Roger Liddle, an opposition member of the House of Lords’ Labor Party, said Brexit had separated Britain from ‘the most successful peace project in history’.
“Today is a victory for a toxic nationalist populism over liberal rules-based internationalism, and it’s a very bad, and for me very painful, day,” he said.
The sentiment was reiterated by the French Minister for Europe, Clément Beaune.
“This is a day that will be historic, that will be sad,” he told broadcaster LCI.
“But we must also look to the future. A number of lessons need to be learned from the Brexit, starting with lies, I think, that have been told to the British. And we will see that what is promised – a kind of total freedom, a lack of restrictions, of influence – I do not think will happen. ‘
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John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, contributed to this story.
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