Withdrawal Agreement
The Withdrawal Agreement is the set of terms for the UK separating from the EU.
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Description
May and Juncker negotiated the first agreement to separate the UK from the EU by late 2018. The treaty was however rejected by the House of Commons in a series of votes; the first called in January 2019 and then twice more in March. This was treated as a vote of no confidence and triggered a leadership contest within the Conservative Party..
The Irish backstop was an important part of this treaty, as the imposition of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland was seen to be infeasible. In the case that a negotiated trade and commerce agreement could not be reached, the backstop would in part remove Northern Ireland from the UK, as it would instead implement various laws and regulations of the EU. Rather than an immigration, trade, and customs border dividing the Irish isle, there would be a division between it and Great Britain.
Following the party election, Johnson set a deadline for negotiations under threat of a hard Brexit. This referred to an exit from the EU in complete absence of a negotiated deal. Terms of trade, commerce, immigration, transit, etc., would then revert to what they were before the EU was incorporated, or to the terms of WTO multilateral treaties. At first, this was just a threat used by May to whip Conservatives domestically.
The final agreement was then renegotiated by Johnson in October, just weeks before that deadline. It was ratified by the Parliament (via the Withdrawal Agreement Act) and given consent by the Council of the EU in January. A transition period of one year was used to negotiate the implementation. Johnson continued to threaten a hard Brexit throughout this process.
The Northern Ireland Protocol is a set of terms for commerce and trade that replaced the Irish backstop for the new treaty. Northern Ireland is formally and legally retained by the UK, but tariffs will be collected by the UK for the EU on any goods moving into Northern Ireland that are at risk if moving then into Ireland. Purchasers who do not take the goods out of the UK then must apply for a tariff rebate from the UK government.
Article 16 of the final Northern Ireland Protocol authorized either the UK or the EU to unilaterally terminate the agreement if it leads to trade diversion. The threat to invoke this article has become a recurring piece of political rhetoric by both Johnson and Von der Leyen.
There is also an infringement arbitration process, which for example was invoked in protest of the Internal Market Bill in late 2020. Johnson also unilaterally and repeatedly extended grace periods for implementation of the agreement, leading to repeated threats to invoke this process.
The Windsor Framework was negotiated in 2023 between Sunak and Von Der Leyen, largely as an answer to the above. This established a 'not for EU' label that can exempt goods from tariffs. It also established a mechanism for the Northern Ireland Assembly to formally object to new EU goods regulations. This then would lead to an arbitration.