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(gè)月后，英國與歐盟終于就未來的貿(mào)易關(guān)系達(dá)成了協(xié)議。解脫是人們最大的感受：套用一種說法，有協(xié)議當(dāng)然比沒有協(xié)議要好。但貿(mào)易條款回歸到了類似于1993年歐盟單一市場誕生之前的狀態(tài)，這將造成混亂。不過，英國將避免無協(xié)議退歐的混亂——本周法國禁止跨海峽貨運(yùn)的禁令就代表著那種混亂的危險(xiǎn)性——那將使新冠疫情導(dǎo)致的經(jīng)濟(jì)低迷雪上加霜。然而，從長遠(yuǎn)來看，這注定是個(gè)非常薄弱的協(xié)議。這個(gè)協(xié)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。