U.K. completes its Brexit from EU
Britain has completed its economic break from the European Union, ending its 48-year partnership with the trading bloc and starting a new and more distant relationship with its continental neighbors.
The formal move came at 11 p.m. Thursday in London. The U.K. left the single market and customs union, which allows people, goods and services to flow freely across more than two dozen countries.
A different trade deal took effect, bringing new restrictions and red tape. But to Brexit supporters, the arrangement reclaimed national independence from the Brussels-based bloc.
Britain left the EU politically almost a year ago but remained part of its economic structures until the end of 2020.
After more than four years of Brexit political drama, the day itself was something of an anticlimax. U.K. lockdown measures to curb the coronavirus have curtailed mass gatherings to celebrate or mourn the moment, though Parliament’s huge Big Ben bell sounded the hour to ring in the New Year.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who won power vowing to “Get Brexit Done” — said the day “marks a new beginning in our country’s history and a new relationship with the EU as their biggest ally.”
“This moment is finally upon us and now is the time to seize it,” he said after Britain’s Parliament approved a U.K.EU trade deal overnight, the final formal hurdle on the U.K. side before departure.
It has been 4½ years since Britain voted in a referendum to leave the bloc it had joined in 1973. The U.K. left the EU’s political structures on Jan. 31 ,2020, but
the repercussions of that decision have yet to be felt, since the U.K.’s economic relationship with the bloc remained unchanged during an 11-month transition period that ended Thursday.
With the departure, Britain left the EU’s vast single market and customs union — the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II.
A free trade agreement sealed on Christmas Eve after months of tense negotiations will ensure Britain and the 27-nation EU can continue to trade in goods without tariffs or quotas. That should help protect the almost $900 billion in annual trade between the two sides, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that rely on it.
But firms face sheaves of new paperwork and expenses. Traders are struggling to digest the new rules imposed by a 1,200-page deal that was agreed just a week before the changes take place.
The English Channel port of Dover
and the Eurotunnel passenger and freight route are bracing for delays, though the pandemic and the holiday weekend mean there will be less cross-Channel traffic than usual. The vital supply route was snarled for days after France closed its border to U.K. truckers for 48 hours last week in response to a fast-spreading variant of the virus identified in England.
The British government insisted that “the border systems and infrastructure we need are in place, and we are ready for the U.K.’s new start.”
Hundreds of millions of individuals in Britain and the bloc also face changes to their daily lives.
After Thursday, Britons and EU citizens lose the automatic right to live and work in the other’s territory. From now on they will have to follow immigration rules and obtain work visas. Tourists won’t need visas for short trips, but new headaches — from travel insurance to pet paperwork — still loom for Britons visiting the continent.