BRUSSELS (AP) – The European Union and the United Kingdom announced on Saturday the huge agreement that is likely to govern future trade and cooperation between them from 1 January, establishing relations between the 27-nation bloc and the United Nations. its former member country and neighboring new foot, but much further away.
EU ambassadors and legislators on both sides of the English Channel will now be concerned about the “EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement”. containing more than 1,240 pages of text. EU envoys are expected to meet on Monday to discuss the document, which has been drawn up over nine intense months of talks.
Companies, which have long been left in the dark about what depends on them, will also try to understand their implications.
Most importantly, the agreement as it stands, ensures that Britain can continue to trade goods with the world’s largest trading bloc without tariffs or quotas after the UK is fully liberated from the EU. He ceased to be an official member on January 31 of this year and is just days away from the end of an exit transition period.
But other barriers will be raised as the UK loses the kind of access to a huge market that only members can guarantee. They range from access to fishery waters to energy markets and include everyday ties as important to citizens as travel arrangements and educational exchanges.
EU member states are expected to approve the agreement next week. British lawmakers could vote on it on Wednesday. But even if approved, the text would only enter into force provisionally on New Year’s Day, as the European Parliament must also have its say.
EU lawmakers said last weekend that there simply was not enough time to properly examine the text before the deadline and that they would debate and vote on the document in January and February, if the approval process works properly.
Despite the agreement, unanswered questions remain in many areas, including security cooperation (with the UK losing access to real-time information in some EU police databases) and access to the EU market for the huge UK financial services sector.
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