The Prime Minister has secured agreement with the EU on Phase 1 of the Brexit negotiations.

The three areas covered by this phase and details of the agreement reached are:

Citizens’ Rights:

  • Throughout this process, the PM has said that there needs to be reciprocal protections for British citizens living in the EU and for EU citizens living in the UK. This is what this deal delivers.

  • In the UK, EU citizens’ rights will be upheld by implementing the agreement into our law, instead of continued EU law enforced by the EU courts, as the EU first asked for. The compulsory jurisdiction of the ECJ will have ended.

  • Our courts can choose to ask the ECJ for a legal view on the law in relation to citizens’ rights where there is a point of law that has not arisen before – but our Courts will make the final judgements on each case, not the ECJ.

  • In practical terms, if the past is a guide we would not expect this to happen very often – it currently happens for two or three cases a year in this area of law. And this ability will be strictly confined to those citizens’ rights as exercised under the withdrawal agreement by EU citizens who were settled here before we leave the EU, and will not extend in any way beyond that.

  • And there is an 8-year sunset clause in any case – at the end of which even this voluntary mechanism will come to an end and we will, once again, be in total control of our own laws.

  • In short, the ability of our courts to ask the ECJ for a view will be voluntary, very narrowly defined, and time limited.

  Money:

  • The Prime Minister has continually said that we are a country that honours its obligations
  • As part of that we have agreed a fair settlement of commitments we’ve made while a member of the EU, in the spirit of our future partnership.
  • Following a rigorous assessment by our negotiators of claims made on the EU side, we expect the settlement to come in significantly below many of the initial projections.
  • All of this is money that we would have paid anyway had we stayed in the EU.
  • As we leave, and we pay off our commitments, this means there will be significant sums to spend on our priorities, including the NHS, which would otherwise have gone to the EU
  • This offer is made in the spirit of our future partnership, and depends upon a broader agreement being reached. Of course, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and if there is no agreement then our offer falls away too.

Northern Ireland:

  • The Common Travel Area with Ireland will be maintained.
  • Everyone has pledged that there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. We want to see that avoided by the future trading relationship between the UK and the EU that we are confident we can negotiate in phase 2. But if we do not achieve that we will look to negotiate specific solutions for the Northern Irish border.

If we do not achieve either of those outcomes, we will maintain full alignment – that is sharing the same policy goals even if we achieve them by different means - with those rules which specifically support north-south cooperation under the terms of the 1998 Belfast Agreement.

  • We will do this either at a UK-wide level or at a Northern Ireland only level if there is cross-community consent for that. In either event, we will protect Northern Ireland’s place in the internal market of the UK with full, unfettered access for Northern Ireland’s businesses.

  • But we are confident it will not come to that. The best way to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland is to negotiate the right trading relationship between the UK and the EU, and that is what we will now be able to do.

 

Marcus commented:

“This is real progress and I congratulate the Prime Minister and her team for overcoming a number of obstacles to reach a fair agreement.

“There is, of course, more to do but now we can move onto discussions about future security and trade issues. It is in everybody’s interests that we achieve trade agreements that are mutually beneficial and that those agreements recognise the unique position of the UK.

“In recent weeks a number of newspapers, so-called “experts” and others who do not accept the result of last-year’s Referendum have speculated that the UK government would fail to reach agreement with the EU – today’s announcement of a fair agreement shows how ill-informed those sources really are.”