Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
British leader, EU hit tentative Brexit deal; next step Parliament
BRUSSELS — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hammered out a last-minute compromise Brexit deal with his European counterparts Thursday, raising the prospect that Britain can be out of the European Union by the end of the month.
Now Johnson will have to win approval for his draft deal in the fractious British Parliament, beginning with a rare sitting of the House of Commons on Saturday.
“This is a great deal for our country — the U.K. — and our friends in the EU,” Johnson said Thursday night in Brussels after his negotiators agreed to a 63-page draft text. “Now is the moment for our parliamentarians to get this done.”
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker tweeted Thursday morning: “We have one! It’s a fair and balanced agreement for the EU and the UK and it is testament to our commitment.”
The 27 ambassadors to the EU have been asked to stick around Brussels over the weekend, so they can handle any fallout from the British Parliament votes. U.K. law requires Johnson to seek an extension if a deal isn’t approved by Saturday. And EU leaders would likely grant one, to avoid the potential economic chaos of a sudden break without a managed transition.
The leaders deflected questions Thursday about what-ifs.
“We didn’t negotiate an agreement with the idea it would be rejected by the British Parliament,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a news conference. “We haven’t focused on what will happen if the British Parliament doesn’t accept the withdrawal agreement.”
But the deal ran into political headwinds almost immediately, when Northern Ireland’s influential Democratic Unionist Party refused to support it, saying it would cleave Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and hurt its economy. The party’s rebellion deprived Johnson of his most obvious path to a majority.
“It is our view that these arrangements would not be in Northern Ireland’s longterm interests,” the Democratic Unionist Party said in a statement. “Saturday’s
vote in Parliament on the proposals will only be the start of a long process to get any withdrawal agreement bill through the House of Commons.”
Until now, the 10 members of that party — who are committed to serving their Protestant, pro-British, socially conservative base — have held outsize power over the shape of Brexit. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, needed them to prop up her government after her Conservative Party lost its parliamentary majority in 2017 elections. In exchange, they extracted a promise that the government spend about $1.3 billion in Northern Ireland.
Johnson’s parliamentary math is different. He isn’t singularly dependent on them. But he still needs the backing of lawmakers from other parties, and plowing ahead without the Democratic Unionists is a risky strategy.
On Saturday, he is seeking a yes-or-no vote on the deal, asking lawmakers to support it or opt for a no-deal exit.
Many opposition lawmakers want to oppose the deal and then seek to delay Brexit until there has been an election, a new referendum or new negotiations.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labor Party, said the agreement reached Thursday was an “even worse deal” than May’s and that the “best way to get Brexit sorted is to give the people the final say in a public vote.”
Under the deal — which focuses mostly on the split from the EU, not on how the two sides will work together in the future — Britain would leave the bloc but would continue to apply EU rules until the end of 2020. EU and British negotiators would try to hammer out a trade deal and other elements of their future relationship in the meantime. The transition period could be extended up to two years if both sides agree.
The deal suggests a harder break than ever envisaged by May, with Britain potentially taking a sharply different line on trade, taxes and regulations.
Under Johnson’s plan, only Northern Ireland is committed to remaining largely aligned with the bloc, at least for now, even though it is leaving the EU along with the rest of the United Kingdom.
The trickiest part of the talks always centered on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which will remain in the European Union.
Borderless movement has been a key part of the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of violence in the region, but it was challenged by Brexit.
In his brief comments in Brussels, Johnson praised the deal as one that protects the peace in Ireland. He discounted concerns that the deal cleaves off Northern Ireland and surrenders it to never-ending EU tariff and customs laws, as the Northern Ireland unionists assert.
Johnson insisted the deal leaves the United Kingdom “whole” and “means that Northern Ireland and every part of the U.K. can take part in not just free-trade deals, offering our tariffs, exporting our goods around the world, but it also means we can take, together as a single United Kingdom, decisions about our future — our laws, our borders, our money and how we want to run the U.K.”
Elements of the new deal crossed red lines that previous British leaders ruled out. British authorities will have to conduct customs checks in the Irish Sea for goods moving inside their own country, as Northern Ireland would remain locked into most EU regulations and trade rules.
But the EU also made significant concessions that it had previously said were impossible. Every four years, a quorum of Northern Ireland lawmakers would vote on whether they wanted to stay so closely aligned with the EU, offering a voice to the range of communities there.
If they decline, that would likely require a hard border, something the EU had previously refused to consider.