With the New Year comes the final UK-EU Brexit split
LONDON — Like a separated couple still living together, BritainandtheEuropeanUnionspent 2020 wrangling and wondering whether they can remain friends.
On Thursday, the U.K. finally moved. At 11 p.m. London time — midnight at EU headquarters in Brussels — Britain economically and practically left the 27-nation bloc, 11 months after its formal political departure.
After more than four years of Brexit political drama, thedaywas something of an anticlimax. U.K. lockdown measures to curb the coronavirus have curtailed mass gatherings to celebrate or mourn the moment.
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 newrelationship with the EUas 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 4 ½ 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 an11-monthtransition period that ended Thursday.
Now, Britain is leaving the EU’s vast single market and customs union — the biggest single economicchangethecountryhas experienced since World War II.
A free trade agreement sealed on Christmas Eve after months of tense negotiations will ensure Britain and the EU can continue to trade in goodswithouttariffs or quotas. That should help protect the $894 billion in annual trade between the two sides, and the hundredsofthousandsofjobsthat rely on it.
But firms face new paperwork and expenses. Traders are struggling to digest the new rules imposedbya1,200-page deal that was agreed just a week before the changes take place.
The English Channel port of DoverandtheEurotunnelpassenger and freight route are bracing for delays, though the pandemic and the holiday weekend mean there will beless trafficthanusual. Thevital supply routewassnarled 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 newstart.”
But freight companies are holding their breath. U.K. haulage firm Youngs Transportation is suspending services to the EU until Jan. 11 “to let things settle.”
The services sector, which makes up 80% of Britain’s economy, doesn’t even know what the rules will be for business with the EU in 2021 as many details have yet to be hammered out.
For some in Britain, including the prime minister, it’s a moment of pride, a reclaiming of national independence from a vast Brussels bureaucracy. Conservative lawmaker Bill Cash, who campaigned for Brexit for decades, said it was a “victory for democracy and sovereignty.”
French President Emmanuel Macron expressed regret over the split.
“TheUnitedKingdomremains our neighbor but also our friend and ally,” Macron said in a New Year’s address.