One out, will others follow?
The European Union will not be the same as from tomorrow.
For the first time in its history, a member is leaving the bloc. The United Kingdom will, as from midnight tonight, no longer be officially part of the EU.
Brexit comes to be but the complete change will not be overnight.
The UK is formally leaving the EU with a withdrawal deal, and an 11-month transition period will now start, ending on 31 December. During this timeframe, the UK will still be part of the EU Customs Union and single market, but it will be effectively out of the political institutions and it will not be represented in the European Parliament.
For pro-Europeans, departure will be the gloomy time that Britain leaves a project that brought once-warring nations under one roof, set up an immense free-trading zone made up of more than half a billion people and allowed Europeans to study, work and live across the continent.
For Brexit supporters, it will be the moment that the UK regains the title of a sovereign nation after 47 years of membership in what they have by and large seen as the bureaucratic EU club that was more harmful than beneficial.
The uncertainty that the UK is experiencing today is similar to the time when it joined what was then known as the European Economic Community – which later evolved into the EU as we now know it. The country was divided on the issue, just as much as it is today. The three and a half years since the Brexit vote in June 2016 involved unprecedented levels of parliamentary resentment, public anger and mistrust in the country’s institutions that lead to doubts about anyone’s ability to bring about reconciliation anytime soon.
On the day that the UK became a member of the EU – 1 January, 1973 – The Guardian newspaper had written: “Britain passed peacefully into Europe at midnight last night without any special celebrations. It was difficult to tell that anything of importance had occurred.”
There followed nearly five decades of a rocky relationship between the UK and the EU. Looking back, the two were bedfellows but never really in love.
The last five years have been years of turmoil for the UK, first with the idea of holding a referendum on leaving/staying in the EU and then, after the majority voted to exit the bloc, months of parliamentary debates and discussions ensued with the EU on how to best proceed.
Dates for the official separation were established and later extended and, even now that the day when the UK will no longer be part of the EU has come, there is still so much confusion on the way forward. European citizens living in the UK and British citizens who reside in Europe still do not know what the change will bring about for them.
What is sure is that the European Union is weaker without the UK as a member, and the UK is weaker as an individual nation.
The concern for many now is whether this is just the first step towards the dismantling of the bloc. Will others take the cue? The British experience may be seen as having been too convoluted and might dissuade anyone having an intention to put one’s own country through the same turmoil, but in the end they got there, didn’t they?