It was late on Christmas Eve last year when the EU and UK finally clinched a Brexit trade deal after years of wrangling, threats and missed deadlines to seal their divorce.
There was hope that the now-separated UK and the 27-nation bloc would sail their relationship toward calmer waters. No chance.
Such was the bile and bad blood stirred up by the diplomatic brinkmanship and bitter divorce that, two months from another Christmas, insults of treachery and duplicitousness are flying again.
“It was written in the stars from the start,” professor Hendrik Vos of Ghent University said. “There were a lot of loose
BBC News
By BBC Monitoring
image copyrightBBC Monitoring
Newspapers around Europe are debating what lies ahead after the UK and the European Union agreed a post-Brexit trade deal.
Many commentators agree that Britain may have avoided the price hikes and disruption of no-deal, but they say it must still walk a trade tightrope to avoid further tariffs.
Arnaud de La Grange in
France s centre-right Le Figaro newspaper says the UK must race to reach trade agreements with other countries. For the UK, 2021 is the year of a leap into the unknown, he writes. [The] political price of the deal may prove to be much higher than the economic price, as the kingdom is tearing along its seams,