Britain and the EU yesterday reached a historic deal on Brexit divorce terms that allows them to open talks on a future relationship after the split.
British Prime Minister Theresa May rushed to Brussels for early morning talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to reach the breakthrough.
The European Commission announced that it “recommends sufficient progress” had been made by Britain on separation issues, including the Irish border, Britain’s divorce bill and EU citizens’ rights, but EU President Donald Tusk — who is to recommend to leaders at a summit next week to open trade and transition talks — said that the toughest task was to come.
Photo: EPA
“Let us remember that the most difficult challenge is still ahead. We all know that breaking up is hard, but breaking up and building a new relation is much harder,” Tusk said.
May said the key part of the agreement was to ensure there would be no return of checkpoints on the frontier between British-ruled Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Britain leaves on March 29, 2019.
“In Northern Ireland we will guarantee there will be no hard border,” May told a news conference.
Northern Irish unionists, who prop up May’s minority Conservative government, scuppered a possible deal on Monday with their fierce opposition to wording they felt would divide Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster told Sky News she was “pleased” to see changes to the deal following the party’s demands.
The deal commits both sides to respect the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of violence between nationalists, who want a united Ireland, and Northern Ireland unionists loyal to Britain.
Under the agreement, London would find a way to avoid a hard border in Ireland “through the overall EU-UK relationship,” but if this cannot be achieved, Britain would keep “full alignment” with the EU single market and customs union rules that are crucial to the Good Friday Agreement.
In Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar welcomed the deal as “the end of the beginning,” but said Ireland would remain “vigilant.”
On its divorce bill, previously the most contentious issue, Britain agreed to pay a settlement of between 45 billion and 55 billion euros (US$53 billion and US$65 billion).
Concerning the welfare and social rights of the 3 million EU citizens living in the UK after Brexit, as part of the dea,l Britain agreed to protect them with a mechanism to give EU citizens recourse to the European Court of Justice if they feel they are being treated unfairly.
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