Britain on Saturday published the text of its narrow trade agreement with the European Union just five days before it exits one of the world’s biggest trading blocs in its most momentous global shift since the loss of empire.
The text includes a 1,246-page trade document, as well as accords on nuclear energy, exchanging classified information, civil nuclear energy and a series of joint declarations.
The “Draft EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement” means that from 2300 GMT on Dec. 31, when Britain finally leaves the European Union’s single market and customs union, there will be no tariffs or quotas on the movement of goods originating in either place between the United Kingdom and the EU.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson cast the deal as the final implementation of the will of the British people who voted 52-48% for Brexit in a 2016 referendum, while Europe’s leaders said it was time to leave Brexit behind.
Michael Gove, a senior British minister who campaigned alongside Johnson to leave the EU, said the deal would allow Britain to put some of the divisions of the nearly five-year Brexit crisis behind it.
“Friendships have been strained, families were divided and our politics has been rancorous and, at times, ugly,” Gove wrote in The Times. “We can develop a new pattern of friendly cooperation with the EU, a special relationship if you will, between sovereign equals,” Gove said.
The Brexit referendum exposed a United Kingdom divided about much more than the European Union, and has fueled soul-searching about everything from secession and immigration to capitalism, empire and modern Britishness.
Such musings amid the political crisis over Brexit have left allies puzzled by a country, the world’s No. 6 economy and a pillar of the NATO alliance, that was for decades touted as a confident pillar of Western economic and political stability.
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Source: Reuters
