Withdrawal Agreement Key Points

On 28 October 2019, the EU granted the requested extension of the withdrawal period and the following day, the Early Parliamentary Elections Act 2019 was passed by the House of Commons and received Royal Assent on 31 October 2019. Parliament was dissolved on 6 November 2019 and the MCA fell after making no further progress since its second reading. The Withdrawal Agreement has therefore not been ratified by either the UK or the EU. The draft Brexit deal states that both sides will “do their best” to finalise a future trade deal six months before the end of the transition period in December 2020, but that if this is not the case, the EU and the UK could “jointly extend the transition period” for an indefinite period. Otherwise, the backstop solution for Ireland and Northern Ireland would come into force, which aims to prevent a hard border. The backstop, which consists of `a single customs territory between the Union and the United Kingdom`, applies from the end of the transition period` `if and as long as it is not`. a subsequent agreement shall apply`. Moving out of the backstop, the agreement states that if “a party considers that the backstop is no longer necessary, it may inform the other party” and explain the reasons. A joint committee must then meet within six months, and the two parties must agree together to end the backstop. The Protocol foresees that the common travel area and North-South cooperation will continue to a large extent as before, as will the internal electricity market (so that some EU legislation on wholesale electricity markets will continue to apply). The Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, officially an agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community[3][4], is a treaty between the European Union (EU), Euratom and the United Kingdom (UK), signed on 24 January 2020[5], which sets out the conditions for the United Kingdom`s withdrawal from the EU and Euratom. The text of the treaty was published on 17 October 2019[6] and is a renegotiated version of an agreement published six months earlier. The previous version of the Withdrawal Agreement was rejected three times by the House of Commons, leading Queen Elizabeth II to accept Theresa May`s resignation as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and to appoint Boris Johnson as the new Prime Minister on 24 July 2019.

In another potentially controversial clause, the draft agreement only grants London`s financial centre a basic level of access to EU markets, similar to that of US and Japanese companies. It would be based on the EU`s existing system of access to financial markets known as equivalence – a watered-down relationship that Brussels has always said is the best deal Britain can expect. Negotiations on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom took place in two tranches. A first draft withdrawal agreement was finalised by Theresa May`s government in November 2018. .