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… relationship between Britain and the EU as sovereign equals, joined by … European Union, with both European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council … made in Europe.”
The European Parliament is expected to examine the …

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s long and sometimes acrimonious divorce from the European Union ended Thursday with an economic split that leaves the EU smaller and the U.K. freer but more isolated in a turbulent world.

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        Britain left the European bloc’s vast single market for people, goods and services at 11 p.m. London time, midnight in Brussels, completing the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II. A different U.K.-EU trade deal will bring new restrictions and red tape, but for British Brexit supporters, it means reclaiming national independence from the EU and its web of rules.

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        Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose support for Brexit helped push the country out of the EU, called it “an amazing moment for this country.”

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“We have our freedom in our hands, and it is up to us to make the most of it,” he said in a New Year’s video message.

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        The break comes 11 months after a political Brexit that left the two sides in the limbo of a “transition period” — like a separated couple still living together, wrangling and wondering whether they can remain friends. Now the U.K. has finally moved out.

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It was a day some had longed for and others dreaded since Britain voted in a 2016 referendum to leave the EU, but it turned out to be something of an anticlimax. U.K. lockdown measures to curb the coronavirus curtailed mass gatherings to celebrate or mourn the moment, though a handful of Brexit supporters defied the restrictions to raise a toast outside Parliament as the Big Ben bell sounded 11 times on the hour.

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A free trade agreement sealed on Christmas Eve after months of tense negotiations ensures that Britain and the 27-nation EU can continue to buy and sell goods without tariffs or quotas. That should help protect the 660 billion pounds ($894 billion) in annual trade between the two sides, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that rely on it.

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        But companies face sheaves of new costs and paperwork, including customs declarations and border checks. Traders are struggling to digest the new rules imposed by the 1,200-page trade deal.

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        The English Channel port of Dover and the Eurotunnel passenger and freight route braced for delays as the new measures were introduced, though the pandemic and a holiday weekend meant cross-Channel traffic was light, with only a trickle of trucks arriving at French border posts in Calais as 2020 ended. 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.

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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.”

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        But freight companies were holding their breath. Youngs Transportation in the U.K. suspended services to the EU until Jan. 11 “to let things settle.”

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        “We figure it gives the country a week or so to get used to all of these new systems in and out, and we can have a look and hopefully resolve any issues in advance of actually sending our trucks,” said the company's director, Rob Hollyman.

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        The services sector, which makes up 80% of Britain’s economy, does not even know what the rules will be for business with the EU in 2021. Many of the details have yet to be hammered out. Months and years of further discussion and argument  over everything from fair competition to fish quotas lie ahead as Britain and the EU settle into their new relationship as friends, neighbors and rivals.

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        Hundreds of millions of individuals in Britain and the bloc also face changes to their daily lives. Britons and EU citizens have lost 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 face new headaches including from travel insurance and pet paperwork.

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        For some in Britain, including the prime minister, it’s a moment of pride and a chance for the U.K. to set new diplomatic and economic priorities. Johnson said the U.K. was now “free to do trade deals around the world, and free to turbocharge our ambition to be a science superpower.”

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        Conservative lawmaker Bill Cash, who has campaigned for Brexit for decades, said it was a “victory for democracy and sovereignty.”

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        That’s not a view widely shared across the Channel. In the French president’s traditional New Year’s address, Emmanuel Macron expressed regret.

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        “The United Kingdom remains our neighbor but also our friend and ally,” he said. “This choice of leaving Europe, this Brexit, was the child of European malaise and lots of lies and false promises.”

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        The divorce could also have major constitutional repercussions for the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland, which shares a border with EU member Ireland, remains more closely tied to the bloc’s economy under the divorce terms, a status that could pull it away from the rest of the U.K.

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        In Scotland, which voted strongly in 2016 to remain, Brexit has bolstered support for separation from the U.K. The country’s pro-independence First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: “Scotland will be back soon, Europe. Keep the light on.”

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        Many in Britain felt apprehension about a leap into the unknown that is taking place during a pandemic that has upended life around the world.

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        “I feel very sad that we’re leaving,” said Jen Pearcy-Edwards, a filmmaker in London. “I think that COVID has overshadowed everything that is going on. But I think the other thing that has happened is that people feel a bigger sense of community, and I think that makes it even sadder that we’re breaking up our community a bit, by leaving our neighbours in Europe.

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        “I’m hopeful that we find other ways to rebuild ties,” she said.

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        Associated Press writers Renee Graham in London and John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, contributed to this report.

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        Follow all AP stories on Brexit at <a href="https://apnews.com/Brexit" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">https://apnews.com/Brexit</a>

European Commission Statement Brussels, 31 Dec 2020 The situation facing more than 900 migrants in Lipa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is dire. They are without adequate shelter in severe winter conditions. This mornin…

The European Council adopted on Tuesday the decision on the signing of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement and its provisional application as of January 1, 2021, according to a press release from the Council.

The agreement will now be signed by the two parties on Wednesday. European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will sign in Brussels on behalf of the European Union (EU) while Prime Minister Boris Johnson will sign in London on behalf of the United Kingdom, the release added.

“Next #BrexitDeal hurdle cleared: EU member states have given the final green light by written procedure to the provisional application of the EU-UK Trade & Cooperation Agreement as of January 1, 2021,” Sebastian Fischer, spokesperson for the German Presidency of the EU Council, tweeted.

Next year, the Council will adopt the decision on the conclusion of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, once the European Parliament has given its consent and once all procedures necessary for the entry into force have been completed, according to the release.

The fast-track procedures were adopted in the EU as the post-Brexit agreement was only reached one week before the transitional period expires at the end of 2020.

The EU and the UK announced last Thursday the reaching of an agreement that will govern bilateral trade and security relationship starting from Jan. 1, 2021.

The deal will need the approval of the European Parliament, the British Parliament and the EU’s 27 member states.

The UK is the EU’s third largest trading partner in goods, after the United States and China.

Source: GNA

London, United Kingdom – The UK is bracing for a historic break from the European Union that will reset the relationship between them for generations to come.

More than four years after a slim majority of Britons voted in favour of quitting the EU, the UK will leave the bloc’s single market and customs union at 23:00 GMT on Thursday, December 31.

As the new year starts, the two sides must abide by the terms of a recently inked deal, which sets boundaries on their trade and security relationships.

On Wednesday, the UK Parliament speedily approved the deal, meaning it has now passed into UK law.

In short, Brexit marks the most momentous shift in the country’s recent history and will reverse decades of closer economic, cultural and social integration with the EU, its largest trading partner.

“Historically it’s really significant – it is the first major example of building barriers to trade and to cooperation that we have seen in the modern period,” Simon Usherwood, a professor of politics at the University of Surrey, told Al Jazeera.

“And there’s still a kind of uncertainty regarding whether this is about Britain retreating from the world and pulling up the drawbridge or becoming an international player in the broader sense and becoming a ‘global Britain’.”

The 1,240-page Trade and Cooperation Agreement was finally brokered a week ago, following months of fractious negotiations in the so-called transition period, which began after the UK’s formal departure from the EU in January.

After the deal was reached, a sense of relief was felt by both sides.

It averts the prospect of a chaotic divorce and ensures goods can continue to travel between the UK and the EU without tariffs or quotas from the beginning of 2021, smoothing trade worth hundreds of billions of pounds – and euros – a year.

Still, London’s imminent departure from Brussels’ orbit will bring about a raft of new rules and red tape for businesses.

How Britons and Europeans live, work and travel between the country and the continent will also change, with new visa regulations.

‘An economic rupture’

In the wake of the deal being reached, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke of a “newly, and truly, independent nation”.

He won by a landslide in the December 2019 election on a pledge to “Get Brexit Done”, after the issue effectively ended the political careers of his two predecessors – Theresa May and David Cameron.

Johnson has hailed the EU deal as a triumph, claiming he has achieved what he set out to achieve.

The UK, he said, has taken back control of its laws, borders, and fishing waters under the pact.

He also stressed that the UK will be the “best friend and ally the EU could have” as the pair reorient themselves to their new relationship.

But opponents of Brexit say the divorce threatens to break up the UK, harm the economy in the long term, and diminish its global standing.

National economic output will shrink by 4 percent over the next 15 years as a result of the UK’s departure from the EU’s single market and customs union, according to the UK’s financial watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

EU economies are also predicted to take a hit, although the impact of Brexit will vary considerably across the bloc.

Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands are expected to be most affected, as they do the most trade with the UK.

Analysts said that even with the agreed trade deal, Brexit would effectively result in a lose-lose financial outcome for both sides.

“It’s an economic rupture … and the biggest one-day change in trading relations in modern history,” David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Centre for International Political Economy think-tank, told Al Jazeera.

“There’s 660 billion pounds [approximately $898bn] worth of trade which tomorrow is under new, more restrictive rules,” he said. “Just how much impact it will have we simply don’t know – it’s an entry into the unknown.”

Henig and Usherwood also expect continued political fallout next year and beyond, citing possible flash-points: disruption accompanying the implementation of the trade deal, the agreement’s protocol for Northern Ireland, and its implications for Scotland where the ruling nationalist party is pushing for a second referendum on independence.

There will also be further wrangling between London and Brussels, with many aspects of the pair’s overall future relationship still left to be worked out.

“If you assume the end of Brexit is when there is a new, stable relationship with the EU then we are not yet at that point,” Usherwood said.