The UK will formally exit the EU at 11:00pm (Irish time) tonight, Friday, January 31, following the decision yesterday of the European Council to back the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
The council’s decision followed a vote in the European Parliament on Wednesday to ratify the agreement. This itself followed on from a vote in the UK’s House of Commons on January 23 to ratify the long-troubled withdrawal agreement.
With the withdrawal agreement in place, trade with the UK will remain much the same as it is now during the coming ‘transitional period’.
The purpose of the transitional period is to agree a permanent trade deal between the UK and EU. This period is set to end on December 31, 2020.
The UK government, under prime minister Boris Johnson, has already passed legislation to prevent the transition period from being extended if the need arose.
If a trade deal is not agreed during the transitional period then, from December 31 this year, the UK would then trade with the EU on terms set by the World Trade Organization (WTO) – resulting in tariffs on goods moving to and from the UK – including Irish agri-food produce moving into the country.
The withdrawal agreement
The withdrawal agreement was first drafted and published in November 2018, as a result of nearly two years of negotiations between the UK and EU.
However, when it came time for it to go before the House of Commons, it’s reception from politicians was mixed – to say the least.
Members of parliament (MPs) on both the ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ sides of the political divide opposed the deal for different reasons – with ‘leave’ MPs aggrieved that the now defunct ‘Irish backstop’ would keep the UK in the EU customs union.
In its original form, the withdrawal agreement was defeated in the House of Commons on three separate occasions, leading to a series of extensions to the withdrawal negotiating period in order to avoid a hard, no-deal separation of the country from the EU.
The string of defeats for the withdrawal agreement also resulted in the resignation of then Prime Minister Theresa May. She was replaced in that role (and as Conservative Party leader) by Boris Johnson – who was more closely aligned with the leave side of the argument than May had been.
Last October, the UK and EU came to an agreement on how to amend the withdrawal agreement to make it more agreeable to UK politicians.
The revised agreement removed the Irish backstop, and replaced it with a ‘new protocol’ on Northern Ireland, whereby the UK leaves the customs union, but Northern Ireland would adopt certain regulations of the EU single market to prevent a ‘hard border’ between the north and the Republic (and, by extension, the whole of the EU).
Therefore, the UK will exit the customs union, but Northern Ireland will remain an ‘entry point’ into it. The UK will collect tariffs on the EU’s behalf on goods moving from the island of Britain to Northern Ireland, where there is a possibility those goods would move into the republic, with a rebate system in place for goods that ultimately don’t move south.
Final moves towards Brexit
With a revised withdrawal agreement in place, it was a matter of whether or not the UK government could get support for it in the House of Commons.
For that purpose, Johnson called a general election for December 12 – in which his party achieved a surprisingly large majority.
With a majority of Conservative ‘pro-Johnson’ MPs, the prime minister was then in a position to get the withdrawal agreement finally passed – bringing us to today.
The last three-and-a-half years of political wrangling and tension began in June 2016, when the UK held a national referendum on EU membership, in which the country voted by a slight majority to leave the bloc.