EU leaders yesterday signed their trade deal with the UK and dispatched it to London on a British Royal Air Force jet, setting their seal on a drawn-out divorce just hours before the UK brings its half-century European experiment to an end.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Charles Michel smiled at a brief televised ceremony to put their names to the 1,246-page Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
“It has been a long road. It’s time now to put Brexit behind us. Our future is made in Europe,” Von der Leyen said.
Photo: AFP
Britain is to leave the European single market and customs union at 11pm today, the end of a difficult year, and of a post-Brexit transition period marked by intense and tortuous trade negotiations.
However, as the hefty document, bound in blue leather, was flown to London for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to add his signature, the UK parliament began a rushed debate to clear the decks before the looming deadline.
Introducing the legislation to ratify the deal, Johnson told lawmakers it heralded “a new relationship between Britain and the EU as sovereign equals, joined by friendship, commerce, history, interests and values.”
“With this bill we are going to be a friendly neighbor, the best friend and ally the EU could have,” he said.
Failure to endorse the deal would risk the return of costly tariffs on trade and severe disruption to supply chains, but with support from the opposition Labour Party, Johnson was virtually certain to get his way.
“The central purpose of this bill is to accomplish something the British people always knew in their hearts was possible,” Johnson said as he opened the debate on the legislation to write the deal into UK law.
“We are going to open a new chapter in our national story,” Johnson said. “The responsibility now rests with all of us to make the best use of the powers we’ve regained.”
The prime minister won important political support from a prominent group of hard-line Brexit supporters in his Conservative Party, who said they would back the deal.
Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said that his party would vote for the agreement to avoid the prospect of crashing out without a trade accord, but he criticized it as “imperfect” and “thin.”
“We have only one day before the end of the transition period, and it’s the only deal that we have,” Starmer said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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