Supported by
BREAKING
U.K. and E.U. Leaders Cinch Brexit Divorce Terms
By Stephen Castle and Steven Erlanger
BRUSSELS — More than four decades after Britain tied itself to its Continental neighbors, Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday obtained the approval of the other 27 European Union members on a formal divorce pact from the bloc, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said.
It is a consequential step intended to take the country on a new, if unclear, path.
It has been a long, tortuous journey for both sides, and the drama is hardly over. Mrs. May must still get approval for the deal — a dense, legally binding divorce settlement and a set of political promises for Britain’s future relationship with the bloc — from an outspokenly unhappy British Parliament.
EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations.
— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) November 25, 2018
Since Britons voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, Mrs. May has struggled to define how closely they should remain tied to Continental Europe, ultimately choosing a kind of middle way that has left many dissatisfied. With her own Conservative Party deeply divided and the opposition Labour Party promising to vote the deal down, Mrs. May faces what most consider to be an almost impossible task.
But she is dogged, and, with Britain scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29, she appears to be relying on giving legislators a stark choice: her deal or a chaotic exit without any deal.
If she fails, what happens next would be anyone’s guess. Mrs. May could face a leadership challenge or be left to put her deal to a second vote in the British Parliament. There could be a push for a softer Brexit, new elections or a second referendum. Or Britain could lurch toward a no-deal Brexit, an outcome no one wants on either side of the Channel.
Even as the 27 other leaders of the European Union put their imprimatur on the agreement, they were anxious to do nothing to make Mrs. May’s task any harder. They, like much of the British public, are heartily sick of Brexit, and Europe has other challenges to deal with, including migration and populism, Russian aggression and the Italian budget threat to the euro.
“The summit itself could be something of an anticlimax,” said Anthony Teasdale, author of “The Penguin Companion to European Union.” “But the act of signing on the dotted line to leave the European Union is a defining moment in British history, there is no doubt about that.”
“Many of the younger generation take membership completely for granted,” Mr. Teasdale added. “Having been in the E.U. all their lives, they have difficulty conceptually working out what being outside might look like.”
Britain’s break with Europe was never going to be easy. Even if Britain ratifies the deal, the end of March will see the beginning of many months, possibly years, of negotiations on its future relationship — from trade and travel to security and intelligence.
European officials have been eager to try to help Mrs. May get the deal ratified by embracing language in the political declaration about Britain’s long-term ties with the bloc, which will be closer and of a different kind than any other third country.
Britain’s allies, including the Netherlands, pressed hard for a reference in the declaration to “an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defense and wider areas of cooperation.” They hoped to describe a close relationship that went far beyond a trade deal of the kind the bloc has negotiated with Canada and Japan.
But to British critics the proposals represent the worst of all worlds, a Britain that is neither in, nor fully out, of the European Union. If negotiations fail to produce a good outcome, they fear that Britain could be trapped in Europe’s orbit, obliged to obey rules for years to come without the ability to shape them or cut its own trade deals around the globe.
Even before the vote is taken in the British Parliament, some are already expecting Mrs. May to return to Brussels to seek more concessions if her draft deal is defeated.
But even the ambassadors of friendly countries said that in this scenario Brussels had very little flexibility for further changes, even if it were to create the optics of a British prime minister fighting for a better deal. “Perhaps we could change the graphics,” one senior official said, “but not much more than that.”
Britain joined the European Union’s forerunner in 1973 and embarked, often grudgingly, on a process of integration that accelerated from the mid-1980s. Economic rules are now so intertwined that the former director-general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, has likened Brexit to removing an egg from an omelet.
But Britain was always hesitant — or outright resistant — to pooling sovereignty with a group of Continental countries that joined together after World War II, from which the British emerged victorious.
“Brexit is probably a bigger break for Britain than for the European Union, as the perception from the Continent has always been that Britain was somewhat aloof and detached and closer to the U.S. than Europe,” said Holger Nehring, professor of contemporary European history at the University of Stirling.
Months of difficult negotiations produced the legally binding withdrawal agreement and a vaguer set of pledges concerning a future relationship with the bloc, both of which were officially adopted in Brussels on Sunday.
A few side issues had remained to be resolved, including Gibraltar, which the weak Spanish government is insisting must be treated only as a bilateral issue with Britain. The sovereignty of Gibraltar, a British overseas territory on Spain’s coast that Spain claims as its own, has always been a point of contention. But after British assurances, Spain ultimately did not hold up the deal.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Saturday that Spain would not block the deal, but that threatening to derail Brexit plan had forced Spain’s claims over Gibraltar’s sovereignty onto the European agenda. Until recently, the fate of Gibraltar had not featured in the negotiations, but now Brussels and London “have accepted the demands set by Spain,” Mr. Sánchez told a news conference in Madrid.
“We will have to speak about co-sovereignty and many other things with the United Kingdom,” he said.
Under the plan, Britain would leave the European Union on March 29 but adhere to the bloc’s rules and regulations at least until December 2020, while negotiators try to sort out the longer-term future.
That the divorce agreement would be accepted by Mrs. May and the European Union has been little doubted since the British cabinet approved it this month. In addition to approval by the British Parliament, it will also need ratification by the European Parliament.
For the moment, though, the blessing of European leaders on Sunday finally put a formal divorce deal on the table, one that would chart for Britain a gradual and orderly departure.
That 585-page, legally binding withdrawal treaty deals with Britain’s outstanding payments to the bloc of around $50 billion, the rights of European Union citizens in Britain and vice versa, and how to prevent physical checks on goods at the frontier between Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and Ireland, which will remain in the European Union.
Most of the debate and upset in Britain focuses on the Irish border and a “backstop” plan to tide the two sides over until technology — or another form of trading arrangement — can dispense with the need for strict physical controls. The backstop would apply after the 20-month transition period (which could be extended by a maximum of two years) and only if there were no other solution to the Irish border issue. In that case, the whole of the United Kingdom would remain in a European customs union, while Northern Ireland would have to abide by more of the bloc’s economic regulations.
In theory, at least, the pact will allow the British government time to dismantle a set of laws and structures that have become pillars of British economic, political and diplomatic life, while negotiating with Brussels on a new relationship.
No one in Brussels knows any better than those in Britain about what is coming next, but there is considerable hope that somehow Mrs. May will pull it off.
If she does, Brexit will have implications for the Europeans, too, because the departure of a big country changes the internal political balance.
“Germany has lost an ally in the U.K., which was a counterbalance to France, outside the eurozone but also a big nation likely to take a free market position,” Mr. Nehring said. “There will be a reconfiguration in the E.U., though in the short to medium term I think it will be less dramatic in the E.U. than in the U.K.”
There is some hope in Brussels for a generational and cultural shift in response to the pain of Brexit, and that Britain may yet change its mind and return to membership in the bloc, even if that is decades away.
But Mr. Teasdale believes that the more immediate drift may be in the opposite direction, as Britain’s economic rule book diverges from that of the European Union.
“Britain is a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Continental streams, and leaving the European Union is likely, over time, to make Britain a more Anglo-American type of country,” Mr. Teasdale said.
Related Coverage
Advertisement
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "UK and EU Leaders Cinch Brexit Divorce Terms"
Post a Comment