Radio România Internațional

Tag: Great Britain

  • The Brexit transition agreement

    The Brexit transition agreement

    Brexit secretary David Davis and the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier on Monday announced that they had reached a draft agreement on the terms of a transition deal which will take effect once Britain departs in March 2019 lasting until December 2020. Those terms will underlie the EU’s future partnership with Great Britain. The sides reached an agreement on the rights of some 4.5 million EU citizens residing in the United Kingdom and of 1.2 million British citizens residing in EU countries.



    During the 20-month transition period, Great Britain will be able to negotiate and sign new free trade deals with the EU. The agreement also includes a financial deal, the citizens’ rights in the transition period and a provisional compromise on the post-Brexit border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Michel Barnier said that the transition period demanded by the United Kingdom would give Britain time to prepare its administration and affairs. The agreement will be debated at the European Council Summit later this week.



    In another development, the European Parliament’s Brexit Coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, said Parliament had taken note of the political agreement on the Brexit transition period but it reserved the right to monitor it. The European Parliament has reiterated that according to procedures, it will be the one to determine the final withdrawal agreement. In turn, the British government argues that the transition agreement with the EU will give more certainty to companies and citizens.



    The announcement regarding the terms of the Brexit transition period was made after a day before the UK Parliament Committee supervising the Brexit negotiations had issued a report saying that the withdrawal from the EU might be delayed given the poor progress in the talks between London and Brussels. Great Britain is going to pull out of the Union on March 29, 2019, two years after the withdrawal procedure was put in place under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and nearly three years after the vote in favour of Brexit at the referendum of June 2016. The negotiations are due to end by October 2018 to allow for the European Parliament and the UK Parliament to ratify the agreement.


    (Translated by A.M. Palcu)

  • Brexit talks move to second stage

    Brexit talks move to second stage

    The leaders of the 27 EU member countries, convening in Brussels at the end of last week, agreed that Brexit negotiations can move to a second stage, one which will look at the relations between the UK and the Union once the Britons leave the bloc in March 2019. London has made sufficient progress in clarifying 3 key aspects of Brexit, the EU-27 decided, speaking about the divorce bill, the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the rights of European citizens in post-Brexit UK.



    As far as Romania is concerned, the results so far fully meet the goals pursued in the negotiations, the Romanian presidency says in a press release. The Romanian citizens living in the UK and their families will continue to benefit from all their current rights as regulated by the EU legislation. All social security benefits, including family and child allowances, remain in place, and the professional qualifications obtained or pending prior to Brexit will be recognised. Family reunion principles have also been agreed on, with future family members and the children of the EU citizens in Britain granted the same rights as before.



    Guidelines have also been adopted for the negotiations on the transition period and the future UK-EU relations. According to the Romanian presidency, these guidelines concern aspects like the need to finalise all stage-one elements and to reinforce these outcomes by beginning to draft the withdrawal agreement, making second-stage negotiations conditional on compliance with all the commitments made in the first stage, and the intention to preserve a close partnership with Britain in fields of mutual interest such as security, defence and foreign policy. In the context of the endorsement of these guidelines, President Klaus Iohannis, who represented Romania in the Brussels summit, underlined Bucharest’s interest in having a strong partnership with the UK in terms of security, defence, foreign relations and the fight against terrorism. (Translated by A.M. Popescu)