The Council has today requested the European Parliament’s consent to its decision on the conclusion of the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement and a security of information agreement.
Once the European Parliament has given its consent and once all 24 language versions of the agreements have been established as authentic and definitive, the Council will be in a position to adopt the decision on the conclusion of the agreements, allowing their entry into force. This will be the last step for the EU in the ratification of the agreements.
Background
The United Kingdom left the European Union at midnight (CET) on 31 January 2020 and the Withdrawal Agreement entered into force on 1 February 2020, with a transition period running until 31 December 2020.
Negotiations on the future partnership between the EU and the UK started on 2 March 2020. Negotiators reached an agreement on an EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement and a security of information agreement on 24 December 2020.
On 29 December 2020 the Council adopted the decision on the signing of the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement and a security of information agreement and their provisional application as of 1 January 2021. The agreements were then signed by the two parties on 30 December 2020. The agreements have been provisionally applied since 1 January 2021.
The agreements provided for a time-limited provisional application until the end of February, unless a later date was agreed by the parties. On 23 February 2021, the EU-UK Partnership Council decided, at the EU’s request, to extend the provisional application until 30 April 2021 to allow sufficient time to complete the legal-linguistic revision of the agreements in all 24 languages.