For weary Brexit negotiators on both sides of the English Channel, a Christmas Eve trade agreement sealed 11 months of painstaking deliberations over Britain’s departure from the European Union, encompassing details as arcane as what species of fish could be caught by each side’s boats in British waters.
But for many others — among them bankers, traders, truckers, architects and millions of migrants — Christmas was only the beginning, Day 1 of a high-stakes and unpredictable experiment in how to unstitch a tight web of commercial relations across Europe.
The deal, far from closing the book on Britain’s tumultuous partnership with Europe, has opened a new one, beginning on its first pages with what analysts say will be the biggest overnight change in modern commercial relations.