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BRUSSELS – More than four decades after Britain's commitment to its continental neighbors, Prime Minister Theresa May got Sunday's approval of 27 other members of the European Union on a formal divorce pact, Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, I said.
This is a significant step to bring the country on a new path, even if it is unclear.
The trip has been long and tortuous for both sides and the drama is barely over. Ms May still needs approval of the deal – a dense and legally binding divorce settlement and a set of political promises for Britain's future relations with the bloc – emanating from an extremely unhappy British parliament.
Since the British voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, Ms. May has struggled to define how she should remain connected to continental Europe, ultimately choosing a kind of middle way that left a lot of dissatisfaction. With her own deeply divided conservative party and the opposition Labor party promising to vote the deal, Ms. May is facing what most people consider an almost impossible task.
But she is stubborn and, while Britain must leave the European Union on March 29, she seems to want to give lawmakers a hard choice: her agreement or a chaotic exit without any agreement.
If it fails, what will happen next will be to guess. Ms May could face a leadership challenge or be forced to submit a second vote in the UK Parliament. There could be pressure for a softer Brexit, new elections or a second referendum. Or Britain could switch to a Brexit without agreement, a result that nobody wants on both sides of the Channel.
Although the other 27 EU leaders agreed to the deal, they did not want to do anything to complicate Ms. May's task. Like many British public opinion, they are deeply tired of Brexit. Europe faces other challenges, including migration and populism, Russian aggression and the Italian budget threatens for the euro.
"The summit itself could be something of an anticlimax," said Anthony Teasdale, author of "The Penguin's Companion for the European Union". "But the act of signing on the dotted line to leave the European Union is a defining moment in British history, there is no doubt about it."
"Many members of the younger generation see membership as obvious," said Teasdale. "Having been in the US for the rest of their lives, they find it hard to conceptually determine what being outside might look like. "
Britain's break with Europe will never be easy. Even if Great Britain ratifies the agreement, the end of March will see many months, if not years, of negotiations on its future relationship – from trade and travel to security and intelligence.
EU leaders are eager to try to help Ms May ratify the agreement by repeating the wording of the political declaration on Britain's long-term ties with the bloc, which will be closer and closer. different from that of any other third country.
British allies, including the Netherlands, insisted that the declaration refer to "an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership between trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defense and wider areas of cooperation. "They hoped to describe a close relationship that went well beyond a trade agreement of the kind that the Union negotiated with Canada and Japan.
But for British critics, these proposals represent the worst of all worlds, a Britain that is neither inside nor outside the European Union. If the negotiations do not succeed, they fear that Britain will be trapped in the orbit of Europe, forced to obey the rules for many years without being able to shape or cut its own trade agreements in Europe. the world.
Even before the vote in the British Parliament, some are already waiting for Mrs May to come back to Brussels to ask for more concessions if her draft agreement is rejected.
But even the ambassadors of the friendly countries said that in this scenario, Brussels had very little flexibility to make further changes, even if it meant creating the perspective of a British prime minister fighting for better agreement. "Maybe we could change the graphics," said a senior official, "but not much more than that."
Britain joined the forerunner of the European Union in 1973 and embarked, often reluctantly, on an integration process that accelerated from the mid-eighties. The economic rules are now so closely related that the former Director General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, compared the Brexit to the removal of an egg from an omelette.
But Britain has always hesitated – or flatly opposed – the pooling of sovereignty with a group of continental countries reunited after the Second World War, at the end of which the British emerged victorious.
"The Brexit is probably a bigger break for Britain than for the European Union, because the continent has always had the impression that Britain was a little distant and detached and closer to the states. Only from Europe, "said Holger Nehring, professor of contemporary European history at the University of Stirling.
Months of difficult negotiations have led to the legally binding withdrawal agreement and a series of more vague promises regarding a future relationship with the bloc, which were officially adopted in Brussels on Sunday.
There remained some minor problems to be solved, notably Gibraltar, that the weak Spanish government insists that it should be treated only as a bilateral problem with Britain. The sovereignty of Gibraltar, a British overseas territory situated on the Spanish coast and claimed by Spain, has always been a matter of contention. But after the British assurances, Spain did not finally delay the agreement.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced on Saturday that Spain would not block the deal, but that the threat of derailing the Brexit plan had forced the Spanish claim to Gibraltar's sovereignty on the European agenda. Until recently, the fate of Gibraltar had not figured in the negotiations, but today, Brussels and London "have accepted the claims of Spain," said Sánchez at a press conference in Madrid.
"We will have to talk about co-sovereignty and many other things with the UK," he said.
According to the plan, Britain would leave the EU on March 29, but would adhere to EU rules and regulations at least until December 2020, while negotiators were trying to define a longer-term future.
That the divorce agreement be accepted by Ms. May and that the European Union be questioned since its approval by the British government this month. In addition to the approval of the British Parliament, it will also have to be ratified by the European Parliament.
For the moment, however, the blessing of European leaders Sunday finally put on the table a formal divorce agreement, which would allow Britain to leave in a gradual and orderly manner.
This 585-page legally binding withdrawal treaty deals with British unpaid debts of approximately $ 50 billion, EU citizens' rights in Britain and vice versa, and the prevention of physical checks on goods at the border between Northern Ireland, is part of the United Kingdom and Ireland, which will remain in the European Union.
Most British debates and annoyances focus on the Irish border and on a "back-up" plan to bring the two parties up to speed until technology – or some other form of trade agreement – allows them to do so. to do without strict physical controls. The backstop would apply after the 20-month transition period (which could be extended for up to two years) and only if there was no other solution to the problem of Irish border. In this case, the whole of the United Kingdom would remain in a European customs union, while Northern Ireland would have to comply with more economic regulations of the bloc.
In theory, at least, the pact will give the British government time to dismantle a set of laws and structures that have become pillars of British economic, political and diplomatic life, while negotiating new relations with Brussels.
No one in Brussels knows better than what is being prepared in Britain for the future, but there is considerable hope that Ms. May will succeed.
If it does, Brexit will also have consequences for Europeans, because the departure of a large country changes the internal political balance.
"Germany has lost an ally in the UK, a counterweight to France outside the eurozone but also a great nation likely to position itself in the free market," Nehring said. "There will be a reconfiguration in the EU, although in the short and medium term I think it will be less dramatic in the EU. than in the United Kingdom. "
There is hope in Brussels for a change of generation and culture in response to the pain of Brexit, and that Britain can still change its mind and return to membership in the bloc, even if it is only in decades.
But Mr Teasdale thinks that the most immediate drift could go in the opposite direction, Britain's book of economic rules moving away from that of the European Union.
"Britain is a mix of Anglo-Saxon and continental currents, and leaving the European Union should make Britain, over time, a more Anglo-American type of country," said Mr. Teasdale.
