Some 54 months after the UK voted to leave the EU, a deal is finally done on future trade relations between the two. The overwhelming emotion is relief; a deal, to coin a phrase, is certainly better than no deal. The return of trading terms to something akin to the days before the EU single market was born in 1993 will cause disruption. But the UK will avoid adding the chaos of no deal — a flavour of which was provided this week by the French ban on cross-Channel freight — to the economic scourge of the pandemic. This was, however, long destined to be a very thin agreement. It represents a much harder Brexit than even many Leave supporters thought they were voting for in 2016.
在英國退歐公投約54個月後，英國與歐盟終於就未來的貿易關係達成了協議。解脫是人們最大的感受：套用一種說法，有協議當然比沒有協議要好。但貿易條款迴歸到了類似於1993年歐盟單一市場誕生之前的狀態，這將造成混亂。不過，英國將避免無協議退歐的混亂——本週法國禁止跨海峽貨運的禁令就代表著那種混亂的危險性——那將使新冠疫情導致的經濟低迷雪上加霜。然而，從長遠來看，這注定是個非常薄弱的協議。這個協議代表著一場「硬退歐」，甚至比2016年許多投票者所支持的「硬退歐」還要「硬」得多。