BRUSSELS — The European Parliament has voted by a large margin
to give the
European Union’s final approval to a Brexit deal already beset by
difficulties, complaints and a court challenge.
اضافة اعلان
The tally, released Wednesday, was 660 in favor, with five
against and 32 abstentions.
While the outcome was never really in doubt, the Parliament
expressed considerable concerns about the trustworthiness of the current
British government to carry out its side of the Brexit bargain, including the
trade deal that was just approved.
That agreement, which governs trade and customs issues and
provides for zero tariffs and zero quotas, has been applied conditionally since
the beginning of the year. But a negative vote by the European Parliament would
have killed it, producing the “no-deal Brexit” that neither side favored.
The deal leaves out key issues like financial services and
foreign and security policy. Debates and consultations over how best to
implement the trade deal and the general withdrawal agreement in real life seem
fated to extend indefinitely.
The vote marks the end of a long, winding and often bitter road
that many have compared to an angry divorce after nearly 45 years of marriage.
Britons voted to leave the EU after a campaign filled with exaggerations on
both sides nearly five years ago, in June 2016.
Britain is now on its third prime minister since then. The
struggle over how to define
Brexit and Britain’s future relationship with the European
Union (EU) destroyed the prime ministerships of
David Cameron, who was sure
that Britons would choose to remain, and of his successor, Theresa May, who
failed to sell a Brexit that would keep Britain closer to Brussels.
Boris Johnson wanted a more defined break, giving Britain the
power to set its own regulations and standards, which entailed pulling the
country out of Europe’s single market. But that raised the thorny issue of the
border between Northern Ireland, which is part of Britain, and the Republic of
Ireland, which is a member of the EU.
All agreed that to keep the peace on the island of Ireland,
there could not be the restoration of a land border. To solve the problem,
Johnson proposed a border in the Irish Sea, which came into force with the
Withdrawal Agreement. It has since become the source of considerable problems
and aggravations with new customs duties and health checks, and Brussels
accuses Johnson of scheming to eliminate them.
It also raised cries of betrayal among members of the Democratic
Unionist Party, which backed the Conservative government throughout Brexit. On
Wednesday, in the face of a no-confidence vote, the party’s leader, Arlene
Foster, paid the price for that policy, announcing her resignation, effective
May 28.
The European Parliament had delayed its vote to protest Britain’s
handling of Northern Ireland and the protocol. Britain’s actions are the source
of a legal complaint filed by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive,
after Britain unilaterally extended grace periods for not conducting checks on
goods being transported between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain.
That mistrust ran through the debate over the trade deal, called
the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Christophe Hansen, a key legislator on
Brexit from Luxembourg, said that a positive vote “should not be seen as a
blank check to the UK government or a blind vote of confidence in that they
will implement the agreements between us in good faith, but it is rather an
insurance policy from our perspective.”
There were also numerous worries expressed about Britain’s
misusing or undermining the complicated arrangements on fishing rights.
David McAllister, a German legislator who is half-Scottish,
dismissed some of the problems as teething issues. But he said that some
derived from “the kind of Brexit the UK has chosen for itself,” which will mean
increasing divergence from the EU single market. That by itself will require
continuing discussion, he said, as well as working through areas left out of
the Brexit deal, including financial services and foreign and security
policies.
Brussels is committed to work on practical solutions between
Northern Ireland, mainland Britain and Ireland, he said.
“But the protocol is not the problem; it is the solution,”
McAllister said. “The name of the problem is Brexit.”
Asking Parliament to ratify the deal, the Commission’s
president, Ursula von der Leyen, promised that Brussels would use the dispute
and enforcement mechanisms in the deal to ensure compliance by Britain. If not,
she said, she would not hesitate to impose punitive tariffs.
“The agreement comes with real teeth — with a binding dispute
settlement mechanism and the possibility for unilateral remedial measures where
necessary,” she said. “We do not want to have to use these tools. But we will
not hesitate to use them if necessary.”
Unhappy with Britain, the Parliament had delayed ratification
twice. But the conditional implementation would have run out at the end of
April, so the Parliament finally cast its vote.
After a debate of nearly five hours Tuesday, the legislators,
many of whom were attending virtually, voted remotely, with the final totals
revealed Wednesday.
Michel Barnier, who was the EU’s chief negotiator with Britain,
thanked the legislators for their diligence. He praised the deal but warned, “Everyone
has to shoulder responsibility and respect what they have signed up to.”
He summarized the feelings of many when he said, “This is a
divorce, a warning and a failure — a failure of the European Union — and we
have to learn lessons from it.”
The complications of Brexit and the continuing struggles over
its implementation have served, if nothing else, to end talk in the rest of the
EU about making a similar exit.
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