Britain clinched a Brexit trade deal with the European Union on Thursday, just seven days before it exits one of the world’s biggest trading blocs and four and half years since the Brexit refrerendum in June 2015.
EU commission chief Von Der Leyen and Michel Barnier, EU Chief Brexit negotiator confirmed the agreement.
Ahead of British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s press conference, a Downing Street source said: “Deal is done.”
“We have taken back control of our money, borders, laws, trade and our fishing waters.”
“The deal is fantastic news for families and businesses in every part of the UK.
“We have signed the first free trade agreement based on zero tariffs and zero quotas that has ever been achieved with the EU.”
“We have delivered this great deal for the entire United Kingdom in record time, and under extremely challenging conditions, which protects the integrity of our internal market and Northern Ireland’s place within it,” the source said.
The final 2,000-page agreement was held up by last-minute wrangling over fishing as both sides haggled over the access EU fishermen will get to Britain’s waters after the end of the year.
EU members balked at giving up access to Britain’s rich fishing waters, which support fleets in France, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.
London pushed to reduce EU fishing fleets’ share of the estimated 650-million-euro annual haul by more than a third, with changes phased in over three years.
Fishing makes up 0.12% of the UK’s economy but the negotiations went down to the wire over what EU boats are allowed to catch in UK waters.
The UK was finally forced to give ground on his demands on fishing.
In future 25% of EU boats’ fishing rights in UK waters will be transferred to the UK fishing fleet, over a period of five-and-a-half years.
Barrie Deas, the head of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, said the UK had made “significant concessions on fish”, and “there will be a lot of disappointed and frustrated fishermen tonight”.
Brussels also insisted that the only way to keep the land border between Ireland and the UK open was to keep Northern Ireland, a British province, within its (EU) customs union.
Its fundamental purpose is to prevent a hardening of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The protocol does that by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods and by having Northern Ireland apply EU customs rules at its ports.
That means goods arriving from Great Britain will be checked and controlled at Northern Ireland’s ports from 1 January.
But goods going into the Republic of Ireland and the wider EU will face no new checks or controls.
Following the announcement of the political accord, von der Leyen will send the text to the European capitals.
They are expected to take two or three days to analyse the agreement and decide whether to approve its provisional implementation.
The UK parliament will also have to interrupt its end of year holidays to vote on the deal before the December 31 cut-off.
Once it is signed off and the text published in the EU’s official journal it will go into effect on January 1 when Britain has left the bloc’s single market.
The European Parliament will then have a chance to retrospectively approve the deal at some point in 2021, speaker David Sassoli said.
From January 1 British and EU citizens will be confronted with the reality of Brexit as the transition period ends and borders that were done away with decades ago return.
From that date, Britons will be treated by the EU as “third country” nationals, no longer enjoying freedom of movement to work, study or retire across the European Union.
Britain in turn will process EU nationals at its borders as it does other non-UK passport holders.
EU citizens proving residence in Britain, or Britons already living in a European Union country, will theoretically retain their rights under a Withdrawal Agreement struck in late 2019.
Tourists will see some immediate changes — apart from the fluctuating coronavirus restrictions already crimping travel — but both sides have agreed that travel will be visa-free, as long as the other side keeps it that way.
But the EU will stop British passports being used in its automated e-gates, potentially meaning longer queues at manned passport booths.
Britons must hold passports still valid for at least six months and will be limited to EU stays of 90 days in a rolling 180-day period.
They will also need to show travel insurance coverage, sufficient funds and a return ticket on request.
Europeans entering Britain can use a national ID card until October, after which only passports will be accepted, for stays of up to six months.
EU passport holders will be able to continue using British e-gates under current guidance.
Those with criminal records may be banned and non-European family members of a European may need a visa, depending on nationality.
The UK treats Irish citizens separately from other EU nationals under a bilateral arrangement dating back nearly a century that allows continued freedom of movement between Britain and Ireland.
Europeans will be able to keep using EU pet passports as long as rabies vaccines are up to date. Britons however must see a vet to prepare their pets for travel a month before their trip to an EU country.
The EU-UK deal reached Thursday has set out the visa requirements for business travellers, the details of which are yet to be made public.
In the EU, Britons attending conferences or meetings likely will be exempt from visas where they do not receive payment or provide services.
However, for other UK business travellers, including posted workers and the self-employed, a visa and/or a work permit may be imposed in line with each individual EU country’s laws.
There will also be tax and social security considerations.
Certain services or company ownership in those countries may be off-limits to non-EU citizens or residents or those lacking national licences, and customs declarations may be needed for goods brought in.
In Britain, EU citizens with a job offer will be required to prove English-language skills and a minimum salary, dependent on whether the position is skilled (26,500 pounds, equivalent to 29,600 euros or $35,000) or a shortage occupation (20,480 pounds, 22,800 euros).
From January, EU students going to Britain will need a visa for courses longer than six months, and will have to pay steeper tuition fees — four times as much for degrees such as medicine or MBAs at prestigious universities.
That hefty burden may force many European students to choose EU institutions — some of which are free — over British ones, which UK universities fear will blow a big hole in their finances.
They also say they are already being shunned for research projects led by EU universities.
According to UK parliament research, there were 143,000 EU students in British universities in the 2018 to 2019 school year.
International students have made Britain the second-most popular education destination after the US, and they injected £25.8 billion (29 billion euros, or $34 billion) into the UK economy in 2015.
British students will be excluded from the Erasmus+ programme offering subsidised exchanges to EU countries.
British students wanting to go to EU universities will encounter higher fees in some countries as well as visa requirements that in many cases will curb their right to work.
For the estimated 1.3 million Britons living in the EU and the more than four million EU citizens living in the UK before the end of the transition period, their rights to stay are protected under the 2019 Withdrawal Agreement.
Those wanting to emigrate elsewhere in the EU after January 1 will find a very different situation.
Britons, for example, have long favoured Spain, France, Germany and Italy to set down new roots as workers or retirees.
But the end of freedom of movement will see them having to jump through the same hoops as other “third country” nationals, which often include health insurance, income and language requirements.
Even Britons settled under the Withdrawal Agreement will no longer have automatic rights to move to a different EU country, and will face national immigration laws if they want to do so.
Britain, for its part, is bringing in a points-based system from 2021 that will make it significantly harder for Europeans to move there.
Age, English language ability, funds and the requirement to pay a health surcharge will all be evaluated, with caps on some of the immigration channels. – Agency report.
