LONDON – With just a few days to go, the UK and the European Union agreed to a post-Brexit trade deal on Thursday, signaling the end of a four-year saga that engulfed British politics and exposed a deep cultural divide that shows no signs of healing.
“A deal is closed,” said a UK government spokesman in a statement, which was quickly followed by a triumphant tweet from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“This agreement allows the start of a new relationship between the UK and the EU,” said the spokesman. “The one we always want – a thriving commercial and economic relationship between a sovereign UK and our European partners and friends.”
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said at a news conference: “It has been a long and winding road, but we have a lot to show”.
She said that instead of joy, she felt only “satisfaction and relief”, telling the British that “separation is sweet sadness” and urging the rest of Europe: “it’s time to leave Brexit behind”.
Both sides will present the deal as a political victory, saving the UK and the remaining 27 EU members from the threat of a “no deal” Brexit – widely considered to be a nightmare scenario that would hurt both sides’ economies.
In reality, however, this agreement is what experts call a “rigid Brexit” free trade agreement. It focuses mainly on quotas and tariffs, but does not avoid regulatory checks on products at the border, something experts have warned could cause disruption in ports, resulting in price increases and even shortages.
The UK voted to leave the EU in 2016 and, after years of tortuous politics, it finally left on January 31 this year. Until December 31 it is in a “transition period” with the remaining 27 EU countries, maintaining the same rules when trying to negotiate an agreement.
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Negotiators have been traveling between London and Brussels for months. Most of the time, it seemed that they would be unable to break the impasse, which revolved around how to prevent Britain from gaining an unfair advantage over its newly separated neighbors and fishing rights.
Now that it has been agreed by the negotiators, the deal will need to be approved by EU leaders, who were consulted constantly during trade negotiations, and by British lawmakers in the House of Commons, where Johnson holds a large majority and the Labor Party does not. hoped to get in his way.
The initial Brexit vote was 52 percent against 48, but polls now consistently show that more people than do not believe it was a mistake.
Brexit still has millions of supporters. They see this as a way to break free of Europe’s shared rules, allowing Britain to close its own trade deals and control its borders – often a euphemism for stricter immigration controls.
But independent economists are almost united in agreeing that any form of Brexit will harm the UK economically, an inevitable consequence of leaving the largest political and economic club in the world – not to mention its largest trading partner.
This year, Covid-19 unleashed the worst British recession in 300 years; the pain caused by Brexit is likely to be even worse, according to the government’s Office of Budgetary Responsibility.
The British government’s own estimates say that even an ambitious trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States would not be enough to compensate for the damage.
Meanwhile, political critics fear that in a world where Washington, Beijing and Brussels are competing for hegemonic influence, Britain’s withdrawal from the EU will reduce it to an intermediary outsider.
