Brexit, Westminster approves the agreement. Just missing the Queen News

LONDON – Three years and seven months after the referendum, the Brexit is becoming a reality: this evening, the agreement negotiated by Boris Johnson with the European Union has received the final approval of the british parliament. Now it only lacks the royal seal, or the signature of queen Elizabeth, as is customary for all the new laws, but it is a formal act which is taken for granted.

next week will be the european parliament to vote and approve the agreement, which should be done quickly and without a hitch, in less than no last minute surprises. Then, at 23 London time on January 31, midnight on the continent, the Uk will be officially out of the Eu, of which he was a member for 45 years. A countdown to Downing Street and other festivities in a lower tone to celebrate the historical “divorce”.

At that point it will begin a transition phase until 31 December next that in substance nothing will change: you will still be able to emigrate freely and seek work in Britain, and vice versa for british citizens in the 27 countries of the Eu. The two sides will have eleven months to negotiate a pact on their future economic relations, trade, security, and of any other kind. The main objective is to avoid the payment of duties on import-export through the Sleeve, but it is likely that in a span of time so short it will be only reached an agreement of minimum dimensions, while leaving other issues to be resolved in the future. In theory, there is the risk that the negotiation ends without agreements, so with the “no deal” already feared in the first stage of the negotiations, but it would not be in the interest, nor London, nor Brussels.

The day of the morning he finished the “ping-pong” between the two chambers of the Westminster parliament, as it is called in the jargon of the political. The agreement on the Brexit was approved by a wide margin in December by the house of commons, after the victory against Johnson in the elections of 12 December has given his government a majority of 80 seats, the largest since the days of Margaret Thatcher. But in recent days, the house of Lords, appointed for life by the previous premier and, therefore, with a majority hostile to the Brexit, they have defeated multiple times the government approving five amendments to the agreement of exit from the Eu.

Today, the law is returned to the Municipalities, who have rejected all five amendments. The most important and asked to give the automatic right to 3 and a half million european citizens resident in Britain to stay there indefinitely (and a paper document to prove their status); the right of children of refugees to be reunited with their families in Britain; and the power of british courts to diverge or less, in certain circumstances, from judgments of the european court.

In the course of the debate to the Municipalities, the minister for the Brexit Stephen Barclay has observed that to grant european citizens an automatic right would be rendered null and void the process already underway for the “settled” status, the resident status indefinitely, already got 2 million and 700 thousand people. In addition, the government argues that a paper document can be forged or lost, while a status of the digital no. With respect to children who have requested asylum elsewhere, but ask to be reunited with a relative in Britain, Barclay said that the government does not oppose the measure in principle, but considers that the law on Brexit is not legislation fit and has to return on the argument later, when it has reached agreements with the Eu. “A bitter disappointment”, said lord Dubs, in turn the son of refugees, which was the proponitore of the measure. “A choice devoid of compassion,” agrees mep of the greens, Caroline Lucas. But the minister of Brexit has defended the line of the government, stressing that the United Kingdom is one of the Countries that accept the largest number of refugee children: 41 thousand from 2010, 3500 in the last year.
After which the Municipalities have rejected five amendments, the law is returned to the house of Lords that, albeit reluctantly have approved, putting an end to the “ping-pong” and closing parliamentary procedures. The practice, in fact, that the Lord may give way, in the last instance to the will of the deputies, because the latter are elected by the people, if, between the two rooms you cannot find a compromise. And so, after more than three and a half years of negotiations, after the two parliamentary elections, after three premier, endless controversies and rivers of ink, the Brexit came to the finish line. The fatigue of the race was such that, at least in the spur of the moment, seems to lack the desire to drink or despair: among the sites of the newspapers, only the Telegraph brings the news in the foreground, although the shoulder, the other issues are the center of attention, as the fear that the virus of chinese arrivals at Heathrow airport. But tonight, in fact, the Sleeve returns to be a border. Time will tell what the consequences, on the one hand and on the other channel.

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