Brexit: All You Need to Know About the UK Leaving the EU
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Brexit: All you need to know about the UK leaving the EU Here is an easy-to-understand guide to Brexit - beginning with the basics, then a look at the negotiations, followed by a selection of answers to questions we've been sent. What's happening now? The UK has voted to leave the European Union. It is scheduled to depart at 11pm UK time on Friday 29 March, 2019. The UK and EU have provisionally agreed on the three "divorce" issues of how much the UK owes the EU, what happens to the Northern Ireland border and what happens to UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU and EU citizens living in the UK. Talks are now moving on to future relations - and a plan for a two year "transition" period to smooth the way to post-Brexit relations. What is the 'transition' period? Both the UK and the EU are keen on the idea of there being a period of time after 29 March, 2019, to get everything in place and allow businesses and others to prepare for the moment when the new post-Brexit rules between the UK and the EU begin. It also allows more time for the details of the new relationship to be fully hammered out. The EU wants the transition period - during which they think things should continue pretty much as they do now - to last until 31 December 2020. The terms of a deal have been agreed with EU leaders set to agree. Free movement will continue during the transition period as the EU wanted. The UK will be able to strike its own trade deals - although they won't be able to come into force until 1 January 2021. ▪ Further reading: UK and EU agree transition deal terms ▪ Quick guide: Where we are with Brexit - in 300 words ▪ In a lot of depth: The 129-page draft withdrawal agreement Do we know how things will work in the long-term? No. Negotiations about future relations between the UK and the EU will start if and when the transitional phase has been agreed. Both sides hope that can be done in March, to allow six months of talks to agree the outline of future relations on things like trade, travel and security. If all goes to plan this deal could then be given the go ahead by both sides in time for 29 March 2019. Theresa May delivered a big speech setting out her thoughts on the UK and EU's future relations on 2 March, 2018. You can read about it here. So is Brexit definitely happening? The UK government and the main UK opposition party both say Brexit will happen. There are some groups campaigning for Brexit to be halted, but the focus among the UK's elected politicians has been on what relationship the UK has with the EU after Brexit, rather than whether Brexit will happen at all. Nothing is ever certain, but as things stand Britain is leaving the European Union. There is more detail on the possible hurdles further down this guide, but first let's go back to the basics... What does Brexit mean? It is a word that used as a shorthand way of saying the UK leaving the EU - merging the words Britain and exit to get Brexit, in the same way as a possible Greek exit from the euro was dubbed Grexit in the past. Further reading: The rise of the word Brexit Why is Britain leaving the European Union? A referendum - a vote in which everyone (or nearly everyone) of voting age can take part - was held on Thursday 23 June, 2016, to decide whether the UK should leave or remain in the European Union. Leave won by 51.9% to 48.1%. The referendum turnout was 71.8%, with more than 30 million people voting. Find the result in your area What was the breakdown across the UK? England voted for Brexit, by 53.4% to 46.6%. Wales also voted for Brexit, with Leave getting 52.5% of the vote and Remain 47.5%. Scotland and Northern Ireland both backed staying in the EU. Scotland backed Remain by 62% to 38%, while 55.8% in Northern Ireland voted Remain and 44.2% Leave. See the results in more detail. What changed in government after the referendum? Britain got a new Prime Minister - Theresa May. The former home secretary took over from David Cameron, who announced he was resigning on the day he lost the referendum. She became PM without facing a full Conservative leadership contest after her key rivals from what had been the Leave side pulled out. Where does Theresa May stand on Brexit? Theresa May was against Brexit during the referendum campaign but is now in favour of it because she says it is what the British people want. Her key message has been that "Brexit means Brexit" and she triggered the two year process of leaving the EU on 29 March, 2017. She set out her negotiating goals in a letter to the EU council president Donald Tusk. She outlined her plans for a transition period after Brexit in a big speech in Florence, Italy. She is to set out her latest thinking on kind of trading relationship the UK wants with the EU in a speech on Friday. How did the snap 2017 election change things? Theresa May surprised almost everyone after the 2017 Easter Bank Holiday by calling an election for 8 June (it had been due in 2020). She said she wanted to strengthen her hand in Brexit negotiations with European leaders. She said Labour, the SNP and other opposition parties - and members of the House of Lords - would try to block and frustrate her strategy. However Mrs May did not increase her party's seats in the Commons and she ended up weakened, having to rely on support from the 10 MPs from Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party. You can get more detail on the 2017 election here. What has happened to the UK economy since the Brexit vote? David Cameron, his Chancellor George Osborne and many other senior figures who wanted to stay in the EU predicted an immediate economic crisis if the UK voted to leave and it is true that the pound slumped the day after the referendum - but it has now regained its losses against the dollar, while remaining 15% down against the euro. Predictions of immediate doom were wrong, with the UK economy estimated to have grown 1.8% in 2016, second only to Germany's 1.9% among the world's G7 leading industrialised nations. The UK economy continued to grow at almost the same rate in 2017. Inflation has risen since June 2016 to stand at 3% but unemployment has continued to fall, to stand near a 40-year year low of 4.4%. Annual house price increases have fallen from 9.4% in June 2016 but were still at an inflation-beating 5.2% in the year to December 2017, according to official ONS figures. Brexit negotiations They officially started a year after the referendum, on 19 June, 2017. Here's a picture from that first session: The UK and EU negotiating teams met face-to-face for one week each month, with a few extra sessions also thrown in ahead of EU summits. Their first tasks were trying to get an agreement on the rights of UK and EU expat citizens after Brexit, reaching a figure for the amount of money the UK will need to pay on leaving, the so-called "divorce bill", and what happens to the Northern Ireland border. A provisional deal on these issues was reached on 8 December: 'Breakthrough' deal in Brexit talks. They are now discussing the terms of the "transition" period. What is the European Union? The European Union - often known as the EU - is an economic and political partnership involving 28 European countries (click here if you want to see the full list). It began after World War Two to foster economic co-operation, with the idea that countries which trade together are more likely to avoid going to war with each other. It has since grown to become a "single market" allowing goods and people to move around, basically as if the member states were one country. It has its own currency, the euro, which is used by 19 of the member countries, its own parliament and it now sets rules in a wide range of areas - including on the environment, transport, consumer rights and even things such as mobile phone charges. Click here for a beginners' guide to how the EU works. What is Article 50? Article 50 is a plan for any country that wishes to exit the EU to do so. It was created as part of the Treaty of Lisbon - an agreement signed up to by all EU states which became law in 2009. Before that treaty, there was no formal mechanism for a country to leave the EU. It's pretty short - just five paragraphs - which spell out that any EU member state may decide to quit the EU, that it must notify the European Council and negotiate its withdrawal with the EU, that there are two years to reach an agreement - unless everyone agrees to extend it - and that the exiting state cannot take part in EU internal discussions about its departure. When is the UK due to leave the EU? For the UK to leave the EU it had to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty which gives the two sides two years to agree the terms of the split.