What Is in the New Brexit Deal?

Topics Covered:

1. Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.

What Is in the New Brexit Deal?

What to study?

For Prelims and mains: What is Brexit? Why does Uk wants it? Implications and challenges ahead, overview of the deal.

Context: Britain, European Union reach a new Brexit deal, though it must still be formally approved by the bloc and ratified by the European and UK Parliaments.

Key elements of the new deal:

1. UK will honour EU rules till the end of 2020.
2. UK will pay £39 by ‘divorce bill’.
3. Rights of EU citizens living in the UK and UK citizens in the EU will be guaranteed.
4. Northern Ireland will be aligned with the EU single market for goods while it will legally part with the EU.
5. There will be customs borders between Great Britain and the Irish Island.

Brexit story so far:

1. In a 2016 referendum, Britons choose to leave the EU.
2. The UK is deeply and bitterly divided on how it should exit the EU, and what its future relationship with the bloc should look like.
3. Former British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government and her counterparts in the European Union negotiated a withdrawal agreement last year, but opposition to the deal from the UK Parliament killed it three times. 
4. May’s Brexit defeats led to her political downfall, and she resigned her premiership in June.
5. New head- Boris Johnson took over in July.
6. Johnson promised that he would deliver Brexit for the United Kingdom, “do or die,” by the current deadline of October 31. Johnson has said he’ll achieve what May failed to do: get a Brexit deal that can win the support of Parliament. And if he can’t, well, the UK would be totally fine breaking away from Europe without a deal.
7. Leaving the EU without any deal promises chaos for both the UK and the rest of Europe — yet some Brexit devotees are willing to take the risk because they believe it would deliver a swift and decisive end to the UK’s relationship with the EU.

What caused Brexit to happen?

So far, there seem to be three theories for what drove so many people to vote Brexit:

1. Immigrants: Faced with rising immigration locals worried about their jobs and the erosion of the English way of life wanted their government to clamp down on immigration. This was a revolt against unrestricted immigration from poorer Eastern European states, Syrian refugees residing in the EU and millions of Turks about to join the EU.
2. Elites: Faced with decades of economic malaise, stagnant real wages and economic destitution in former industrial heartlands ever since the rise of “Thaterchism” and the embrace of Neoliberal policies by Tony Blair’s New Labour the non-Londoners have decided to revolt against the elite. This isn’t just about being against the EU as it stands, and its free market and free movement of peoples.
3. Bureaucracy: Faced with Brussel’s asphyxiating amount of red tape the English people decide to “take back control” of their country’s bureaucracy.

The three theories are obviously intertwined at times and contradictory at others, that’s why it matters who is going to be negotiating the post-Brexit relationship between the UK and the EU.

What’s the future for the U.K. and E.U.?

This may be the end of negotiations but it’s also the beginning of talks for a new chapter in Britain’s relations with the European Union. The future relationship will be a matter of debate and negotiation that will most likely take years to crystallize.

In a nonbinding statement, known as the Political Declaration, they agreed “to work together to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and workers’ rights, consumer and environmental protection, and cooperation against internal and external threats to their values and interests.”

A central element of this relationship will center on how Britain trades with the bloc, which will remain its No. 1 trading partner.

Sources: the Hindu.