(Alliance News) - The European Parliament on Thursday delayed scheduling the ratification of the EU-UK trade deal, as tensions simmer over Covid vaccines and the implementation of the Brexit divorce.
Political group chiefs meeting in Brussels declined to set the date for the vote, which would need to take place before the end of April or risk seeing the hotly negotiated deal annulled.
"It's obvious that if the UK doesn't respect the previous agreement, what sense does it make to ratify the one that's on the table," said Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts, the co-head of the Greens group in parliament.
"If there is no ratification by the end of April we are in a no-deal situation. I hope that by then the UK will have come to its senses," he told AFP.
It is the second time that parliament has delayed the vote, which was long expected to take place in late March or April.
The EU-UK trade pact was provisionally applied on January 1, after nine months of tough negotiations and a last minute handshake just before Christmas last year.
Key MEPs are threatening to veto the deal if Britain goes through with a plan to delay checks on food going to Northern Ireland, calling it a unilateral change to the divorce pact.
Brussels has threatened to respond with legal means to Britain's announced move, which the EU says undermines the work done to protect peace on the island of Ireland, which is split between the Republic of Ireland, an EU member, and the British province of Northern Ireland.
The UK and EU officials are also bickering over the vaccine rollout.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday emphatically rejected claims by EU chief Charles Michel that it had slapped a ban on Covid vaccine exports.
The EU argues that while 30% of the vaccines produced in the bloc have been exported, Britain has not published any data on how many vaccines produced on its soil have been sent overseas.
source: AFP
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