Brexit officially takes effect as the UK leaves EU single market
Pro-EU supporter Peter Cook unfurls a Union and EU flag prior to a ceremony to celebrate British and EU friendship. Source: AP
Britain officially departed from the European Union just before New Year’s Day, after Britons voted to leave in 2016.
The UK has left the European Union’s single market and customs union, ending nearly half a century of often turbulent ties with its closest neighbours.
The United Kingdom’s tortuous departure from the European Union took full effect as Big Ben struck 11:00 pm in central London, just as most of the European mainland ushers in 2021 at midnight.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it an “amazing moment”, which would make Britain “an open, generous, outward-looking, internationalist and free-trading” country.
“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 message to the nation.
Most people in Britain and in Europe are keen to draw a line under Brexit, which has dominated politics on both sides of the English Channel since the country’s narrow vote to leave in 2016.’
The referendum on EU membership opened up deep political and social wounds which remain raw, with the consequences of Britain’s departure to be felt for generations to come – for better or worse.
The British pound surged to a 2.5-year peak against the US dollar before the long-awaited exit from the single market, 11 months since the country legally left the EU in January.
Britain has been in a standstill transition period since then, during fractious talks to secure a free-trade agreement with Brussels, which was only finally clinched on Christmas Eve.
‘Be our own bosses’
As of today, EU rules will no longer apply, and the free movement of more than 500 million people between Britain and the 27 EU states has ended.
Gibraltar, a British enclave off the coast of southern Spain, is the exception, after inking a last-minute deal with Madrid to avoid a hard border and major disruption.
Elsewhere though, customs border checks return for the first time in decades, and despite the free-trade deal, queues and disruption from additional paperwork are expected.
“It’s going to be better,” said resident Maureen Martin, from Dover on the southeastern coast of England, where most voted to leave the EU in 2016.
“We need to govern ourselves and be our own bosses.”
‘Our future is made in Europe’
Britain – a financial and diplomatic big-hitter plus a major NATO power – is the first member state to leave the EU, which was set up to forge unity across the continent after the horrors of World War II.
The EU has lost 66 million people and an economy worth $2.85 trillion, but Brexit, with its appeal to nationalist populism, also triggered fears other disgruntled members could follow suit.
“It’s been a long road. It’s time now to put Brexit behind us. Our future is made in Europe,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday, as she signed the trade pact.
In January, flag-waving Brexiteers led by populist anti-EU former lawmaker Nigel Farage cheered and pro-EU “remainers” mourned.
But no formal events are planned for the end of the transition.
Public gatherings are banned due to the coronavirus outbreak, which has claimed more than 73,500 lives and infected nearly 2.5 million people in Britain, including Mr Johnson himself.
Mr Johnson is looking not only to a future free of COVID-19, but also of rules set in Brussels, as he attempts to forge a global identity for Britain for the first time since it joined the then European Economic Community in 1973.
SOURCE AFP – SBS
