■ A long-elusive deal on trade between Europe and Britain came together with a week to spare.
U.K., EU beat deadline, avert chaotic crash-out in new year
BRUSSELS — Just a week before the deadline, Britain and the European Union struck a free-trade deal Thursday that should avert economic chaos in the new year and bring a measure of certainty for businesses after years of Brexit turmoil.
Once ratified by both sides, the agreement will ensure that Britain and the 27-nation bloc can continue to trade in goods without tariffs or quotas after the U.K. breaks fully free of the EU on Jan. 1.
Relief was palpable all around that nine months of tense and often testy negotiations had finally produced a positive result.
The Christmas Eve breakthrough was doubly welcome amid a coronavirus pandemic that has left some 70,000 people in Britain dead and led the country’s neighbors to shut their borders to the U.K. over a new and seemingly more contagious variant of the virus spreading in England.
“We have taken back control of our laws and our destiny,” declared British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “it was a long and winding road, but we have got a good deal to show for it.”
The 27 EU countries and the British and European parliaments still need to vote on the agreement, though action by the European body may not happen until after the Jan. 1 breakup. Britain’s Parliament is set to vote Dec. 30.
France, long seen as Britain’s toughest obstacle to a deal, said the uncanny steadfastness among the 27 nations with widely varying interests was a triumph in itself.
It has been 4½ years since Britons voted 52 percent to 48 percent to leave the EU and, in the words of the Brexiteers’ campaign slogan, “take back control” of the U.K.’S borders and laws.
The devil will be in the details of the 2,000-page agreement, but both sides claimed that the deal protects their cherished goals. Britain said it gives the U.K. control over its money, borders, laws and fishing waters and ensures that the country is “no longer in the lunar pull of the EU.”
Von der Leyen said it protects the EU’S single market and contains safeguards to ensure that Britain does not unfairly undercut the bloc’s standards.