UK and EU negotiators have finally agreed a Brexit trade and security deal, just eight days before Britain leaves the bloc’s single market and customs union on 31 December.
The eleventh-hour agreement, which only emerged after a litany of missed deadlines, averts a no-deal outcome that would have seen Britain trading on WTO terms with tariffs and quotas applied to its imports and exports.
It represents the largest trade deal ever signed by either side, retaining existing zero-tariff zero-quota arrangements on imports and exports totalling around £668bn a year.
A UK source said: “Deal is done. Everything that the British public was promised during the 2016 referendum and in the general election last year is delivered by this deal.
“We have taken back control of our money, borders, laws, trade and our fishing waters.
“The deal is fantastic news for families and businesses in every part of the UK. We have signed the first free trade agreement based on zero tariffs and zero quotas that has ever been achieved with the EU.”
The deal does not preserve the seamless trade with the bloc the UK currently enjoys in the single market, and will see new border checks applied to UK and EU goods. It is the first trade deal in history to erect rather than remove barriers to commerce between the two sides.
Extra red tape and bureaucracy caused by Brexit will see traders fill in an estimated 200 million customs declarations a year, while official estimates say it will cost the UK 4 per cent of GDP in the long term compared our remaining in the EU.
But failing to reach the agreement would have dramatically worsened the logistical chaos currently playing out at English channel ports due to French border closures.
The 2,000-page legal text is understood to resolve bitter disputes on issues including access for EU ships to British fishing waters and Brussels’ demand for a “level playing-field” on standards and state aid.
Brinksmanship on both sides took the negotiation process to the wire, with the UK accusing Brussels of introducing new demands in the final weeks.
Even after the detail of the vast bulk of the agreement was finalised, officials haggled through the night on the precise proportions of individual species of fish to be caught by either side in UK waters.
The deal thrashed out by chief negotiators David Frost and Michel Barnier was concluded some 1,645 days after the UK’s referendum vote to leave the EU, and almost 11 months after the formal date of Brexit on 31 January.
The final, most difficult issue of fishing rights required direct talks between Boris Johnson and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who are understood to have spoken at length over the telephone in the final days and as many as five times in the final 24 hours.
If ratified by EU leaders it paves the way for a treaty governing trade between the former partners on the basis of zero tariffs and zero quotas, as well as future co-operation in areas such as security and law and order.
The document requires approval from the leaders of the 27 EU nations, while the European Parliament is expected to vote on it next year, after the deadline for MEPs to scrutinise it in 2020 was missed by a week.
EU leaders are expected to give provisional approval for the deal so that it can come into effect this year. If they were to refuse to do so, a short period of no-deal could still happen in early January anyway.
MPs and peers are expected to be recalled to Westminster on 30 December to rush the agreement into law in a single day.
But hardline Brexiteers on the backbench Tory European Research Group have signalled that they are not prepared to act as a rubber-stamp, reconvening their so-called Star Chamber of legal experts under the chairmanship of veteran eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash to scour through the document for signs that it does not protect the UK’s sovereignty.
Sir Keir Starmer has yet to say whether his party will back the deal, though Mr Johnson has little reason to fear parliamentary defeat next week, as few Labour MPs will vote against an agreement when the alternative is a no-deal crash-out.
Trading on WTO terms would have meant tariffs of 10 per cent on cars and an average 18 per cent on foodstuffs imported from the EU.
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