EU lays out terms for Brexit transition
U.K. has less than two years to complete exit
BRUSSELS — Britain will have less than two years to ease its way out of the European Union and must obey all the bloc’s rules while having no say in its decision-making during that period, the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator said Wednesday.
Britain officially leaves the EU at midnight on March 29, 2019, but negotiator Michel Barnier said its European partners would accept a transition period to help prepare for Brexit that should only last until the end of 2020.
The EU’S current seven-year budget period winds up on Dec. 31, 2020, making it financially simpler to disentangle Britain’s debts and benefits, but leaving the transition period three months short of the two-year window that British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government was seeking.
The U.K. would be allowed to negotiate new trade arrangements with other nations during that time, but it would not be allowed to finalize any agreement until 2021. It must also apply common EU customs duties and perform all border checks required under the bloc’s laws.
“There will be no transition a la carte. All the rules and policies of the EU must continue to be applied,” Barnier told reporters in Brussels as he unveiled the European Commission’s terms of his negotiating guidelines for the second phase of Brexit talks. The talks will initially focus on the transition period, and Britain will have a say on its terms.
On top of that, he said, “all new rules adopted by the EU during the transition will be applied to the United Kingdom,” with the EU’S highest court continuing to have authority.
As of March 30, Britain will lose its place at the European Council, where ministers represent EU nations, and its lawmakers will no longer sit in the European Parliament. Its judges will lose their places at EU courts. Some officials could be granted a kind of observer status on standing committees and expert groups, but they wouldn’t have voting rights.
New Brexit talks are due to start in early January, but talks on future relations will require more negotiating guidelines for Barnier, and those are only expected to be endorsed by EU leaders in March.