The final point of the grueling Brexit soap opera, the European Parliament voted on Tuesday evening on the EU's trade agreement with the United Kingdom, most likely in its favor, even if the results will not be officially known until Wednesday.
The outcome of this election, against a background of persistent tensions between London and Brussels, is not in doubt, the President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, having himself welcomed in the evening a vote on "the most ambitious agreement never concluded by the EU with a third country ”.
The result will be announced Wednesday at 9 a.m.
The green light from MEPs on this agreement concluded in extremis on December 24th had become urgent: the provisional application of the text, effective since the beginning of the year, ends on Friday.
And the UK rules out any extensions.
The ballot, after a 5-hour parliamentary debate on Tuesday morning, is accompanied by the vote of a non-binding resolution, in which elected officials qualify Brexit as a “historic error”.
Trade between UK and Europe is already falling
The resolution also stresses that the European Parliament must be fully involved in future discussions with London on the governance of this 1,250-page agreement, which was promised by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
On the trade front, European exports to the UK fell 20.2%, while UK imports into the EU fell 47% in the first two months of 2021, according to Eurostat.
Added to this is a crisis of confidence between the two partners, after several Downing Street decisions calling into question the previous agreement concluded with the EU, the 2019 Brexit Treaty, which organizes the divorce.
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The Europeans criticize London in particular for having violated the Irish protocol contained in this treaty, by postponing certain customs and health checks that should be carried out between the British province of Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, in order to avoid the return from a border to the island of Ireland.
"The British government must not take (this vote) as a blank check or a blind vote of confidence," warned Luxembourg MEP Christophe Hansen (EPP, right).
President Von der Leyen, whose services have initiated proceedings against the UK for breach of the protocol, assured MEPs that the EU "would not hesitate" "if necessary" to use unilateral compensation measures against London. provided for in the agreement.
Other points of friction remain unanswered on both sides of the Channel, as evidenced by the threat on Tuesday from France to take "retaliatory measures" against British financial services if the post-Brexit agreement on fisheries does not end. was not implemented.
In this delicate context, the recent dispute over the delays in supplying the continent with AstraZeneca vaccines against the Covid-19, when the United Kingdom was delivered to it on time, has come to throw a little more fuel on the fire.