EU lawmakers voted 621 for and 49 against the Brexit agreement sealed between Britain and the 27 other member states.
The European Parliament gave final approval to Britain’s divorce from the European Union on Wednesday, paving the way for the country to quit the bloc on Friday after nearly half a century and delivering a major setback for European integration.
Earlier on Wednesday, Britain’s ambassador to the EU handed documents formalising Brexit to a senior EU official. Against a backdrop of British and EU flags at the bloc’s Brussels headquarters, Tim Barrow, smiling, passed over a dark blue leather file embossed with the emblem of the United Kingdom. “We are considering a zero-tariff, zero-quotas free trade agreement. But the precondition is that EU and British businesses continue to compete on a level playing field. We will certainly not expose our companies to unfair competition,” European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen told the chamber.
“The UK didn’t fit, we’d be better off out,” he said, describing euroscepticism as a settled view in the UK, where “Leave” won the 2016 referendum by a narrow 52 to 48 percent margin.
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