European leaders to sign post-Brexit trade deal as British MPs face express debate

The UK and European Union will sign a mammoth trade pact this Wednesday to put their seal on a long drawn-out Brexit divorce before parting ways definitively at the dawn of 2021.

EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel will ink the 1,246-page Trade and Cooperation Agreement at 0830 GMT, officials in Brussels said, days after it was clinched on Christmas Eve following months of hard-fought talks.

The hefty document will then be flown by the Royal Air Force to London for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to add his signature, as the UK parliament embarks on a rushed debate to clear the decks before a 31 December deadline.

According to Downing Street, Johnson will tell MPs that the agreement heralds "a new relationship between Britain and the EU as sovereign equals, joined by friendship, commerce, history, interests and values".

The British government only released the accompanying UK legislation on Tuesday afternoon -- less than 24 hours before a debate is to start in parliament an hour after the signing in Brussels.

The government intends to ram all stages of the 85-page European Union (Future Relationship) Bill through the Commons and the House of Lords in one day, before the EU trade deal takes effect at 11:00 pm GMT on Thursday. 

At that hour -- midnight in Brussels -- the UK will be entirely out of the EU, following an 11-month transition period in place since Brexit took legal effect and more than four years after Britons voted to leave in a divisive referendum.

The agreement averted the prospect of a so-called "Hard Brexit" which would have seen quotas and tariffs slapped on all cross-Channel trade, exacerbating strains in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit Britain harder than most.