Introduction

One of the main straplines of the Conservative Party's December 2019 general election campaign was ‘get Brexit done’. This contained the double notions of completing the highly-tortured process of ratifying the Withdrawal Agreement between the EU and the UK that had been the central political challenge of the past year and of the much more prosaic idea that with this completed, the country could get back to the simple and quiet life. In short, it was a gamble that most of the British voting public were essentially tired of hearing about meaningful votes and backstops and wanted to feel they could move on: a gamble that paid off handsomely for Boris Johnson.

But as subsequent events have demonstrated, even the rapid conclusion of the Withdrawal Agreement ratification for the UK's formal exit from the European Union on 31 January 2020 could not produce a situation that might be reasonably described as ‘done’: while public opinion undoubtedly drifted from the high salience of preceding years, the two contracting parties almost immediately plunged into a new round of negotiations, to map out more properly their future relationship. Whereas the Withdrawal Agreement had been concerned solely with the resolution of the UK's departure from the EU, this new treaty would establish a system for ongoing cooperation.

This article focuses on those negotiations and their ultimate production of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) for the end of 2020, a feat that looked to be much less than likely even prior to the arrival of Covid-19 on European shores. In particular, it asks the question of whether it was simply the Withdrawal Agreement, part 2, in the sense of a replication of underlying interests and positions, or rather a fundamentally new stage in the relationship. It argues firstly that while there was a lot of continuity on the British side, this was a function of ongoing uncertainty about the position of EU (and European) relations within the broad context of the UK's foreign and domestic policy: the drivers of negotiations were very largely negative ones of avoiding entanglements and commitments. By contrast, the EU displayed a more significant change in its approach – notwithstanding the continuities of negotiating personnel – that reflected the UK's switch from being a member state to a becoming a third country. This resulted in an attitudinal change on the part of both negotiators and the EU27 in their willingness to accommodate British demands, such as they were.

The result was an Agreement that reflected the progressive normalization of the UK by the EU as an external partner, albeit one with various significant on-going challenges, and also the UK's persistent inability to determine a clear and broadly-accepted logic for Brexit: the basic conundrum of the 2016 referendum – leaving, but for what purpose? – remained as unclear at the start of 2021 as it had a year earlier.

The process of negotiation was fixed in part by the terms of the Political Declaration (DExEU, 2019) that accompanied the 2020 Withdrawal Agreement (OJEU, 2019), which specified an end date of 31 December 2020 to a transition period during which the UK would continue to follow all obligations and processes of EU membership, but without voting or representation rights (Eeckhout and Patel, 2017). This date had been fixed in the original version of the Withdrawal Agreement in late 2018 but was not amended following the various extensions to the Article 50 process. Even with the rapid turnaround of negotiating mandates a month after the entry into force of the Withdrawal Agreement at the end of January 2020, there were less than 10 months left for discussions. These were held within the framework of negotiating rounds – four between March and June; five between late July and September, after calls to ‘intensify’ the process – before a rolling set of daily meetings from mid-October until Christmas Eve tried to unblock progress. Much of this occurred remotely in the spring and autumn, due to Covid restrictions, leaving minimal opportunities for either principals or technical-level negotiators to interact. In parallel, both sides were also continuing their implementation work on the Withdrawal Agreement – and notably its Northern Ireland Protocol that would come into effect at the end of the transition period – and contingency work to prepare citizens and businesses in the event of no deal, something that looked increasingly pressing in the latter half of the year.

The article considers the TCA firstly from the perspective of the legacies of the Article 50 process that produced the Withdrawal Agreement, to consider how each party arrived at the start of the future relationship negotiations in March 2020. It then switches to an analysis of the final Agreement to reflect on the extent to which the EU and the UK achieved their objectives, before concluding with a discussion on the likely implications for the future of the relationship.

中文翻译：

---

“我们的欧洲朋友和合作伙伴”？谈判贸易与合作协议

介绍

保守党 2019 年 12 月大选活动的主要口号之一是“完成英国退欧”。这包含完成批准欧盟和英国之间的退出协议的高度折磨过程的双重概念，这是过去一年的主要政治挑战，以及更平淡的想法，完成此过程后，该国可以获得回到简单而安静的生活。简而言之，这是一场赌博，大多数英国投票公众基本上已经厌倦了听到有意义的投票和支持，并希望感觉他们可以继续前进：这场赌博为鲍里斯·约翰逊带来了丰厚的回报。

但正如随后的事件所表明的那样，即使英国在 2020 年 1 月 31 日正式退出欧盟的脱欧协议批准迅速完成，也无法产生可以合理地描述为“完成”的情况：虽然公众舆论无疑偏离了前几年的高度突出，缔约双方几乎立即陷入新一轮谈判，以更妥善地规划未来的关系。虽然退出协议只涉及解决英国退出欧盟的问题，但这项新条约将建立一个持续合作的体系。

本文重点介绍了这些谈判及其在 2020 年底达成的贸易与合作协议 (TCA) 的最终结果，即使在 Covid-19 到达欧洲海岸之前，这一壮举看起来也比可能要少得多。特别是，它提出了一个问题，即从根本利益和立场的复制的意义上说，它是否只是《退出协议》第 2 部分，还是关系中一个全新的阶段。它首先认为，虽然英国方面有很多连续性，但这是由于在英国外交和国内政策的广泛背景下欧盟（和欧洲）关系的地位持续存在不确定性：谈判的驱动因素是很大程度上是避免纠缠和承诺的负面影响。相比之下，欧盟在其方法上表现出更显着的变化——尽管谈判人员的连续性——这反映了英国从一个成员国转变为一个第三国。这导致双方谈判代表和欧盟 27 国在愿意满足英国要求的态度上发生了变化，就像他们一样。

结果是达成了一项协议，该协议反映了欧盟作为外部合作伙伴逐步实现英国正常化，尽管面临各种重大的持续挑战，而且英国一直无法确定明确且广泛接受的脱欧逻辑： 2016 年公投的基本难题——离开，但目的是什么？– 与一年前一样，2021 年初仍不明朗。

谈判过程部分由伴随 2020 年脱欧协议（OJEU，2019 年）的政治宣言（DExEU，2019 年）的条款确定，该声明 将 2020 年 12 月 31 日作为过渡期，在此期间英国将继续遵守欧盟成员国的所有义务和程序，但没有投票权或代表权（Eeckhout 和 Patel，  2017）。该日期已在 2018 年底的退出协议原始版本中确定，但在第 50 条流程的各种扩展后并未修改。即使在 2020 年 1 月底《脱欧协议》生效一个月后谈判任务迅速周转，但留给讨论的时间也不足 10 个月。这些是在谈判回合的框架内举行的——3 月至 6 月之间有四轮；在 7 月下旬到 9 月之间召开了五次会议，在呼吁“加强”这一过程之后——在从 10 月中旬到平安夜的一系列日常会议之前，试图疏通进展。由于 Covid 的限制，其中大部分发生在春季和秋季，这使得负责人或技术层面的谈判者进行互动的机会极少。在平行下，

本文首先从产生退出协议的第 50 条程序的遗产的角度考虑 TCA，考虑各方如何到达 2020 年 3 月未来关系谈判的开始。然后转而分析最终同意反思欧盟和英国实现其目标的程度，然后讨论对未来关系的可能影响。