英国脱欧两年倒计时开始 《经济学人》20170401-版权归原作者和出版社所有

《经济学人》原文翻译如下
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标题：The two-year countdown to Brexit has begun

副标题：It leaves Britain little time to get through a bulging, contentious agenda

作者：《经济学人》

时间：Apr 1st 2017

BACK in October Theresa May promised to invoke Article 50, the legal procedure for leaving the European Union, by the end of March 2017. On March 29th the prime minister duly sent a six-page letter to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council of heads of EU governments. Article 50 sets in motion a negotiating process with a two-year time limit that can be extended only by unanimous agreement of all EU governments. Mrs May told Parliament this was a time for the country to come together. And in her letter she promised her European partners (seven times) that she wanted a “deep and special partnership” with the EU.

翻译：去年十月，梅姨承诺会在2017年3月底启动脱欧的法律程序：第五十条。3月29日，梅姨如期向欧盟委员会主席发送了六页信。第五十条规定了两年的协商期限，但在欧盟成员一致同意的情况下可以延期。梅姨告诉议会现在是这个国家团结一致的时刻。在她的信中，她向欧盟伙伴们承诺（七次）她想要和欧盟发展“深厚的、特别的合作关系”。

No doubt mindful of the two-year deadline, the response from Brussels was swift. Mr Tusk issued a curt acknowledgment and said he would publish draft guidelines for the negotiations shortly. He confirmed that, after debate among EU governments, the European Council would meet on April 29th to approve the guidelines; later, governments will approve a negotiating mandate for the European Commission. The April meeting will fall between the two rounds of France’s presidential election, giving leaders something else to chew over. They will also have in mind Germany’s election in September.

翻译：毫无疑问，两年的期限，布鲁塞尔的回复很迅速。Tuck先生确认说他很快会发布协商准则草案。他确定，经过欧盟政府的辩论，欧盟将在4月29日召开会议来通过这个准则。随后，政府将会通过一个为了欧盟委员会的谈判任务。四月的这个会议将在两轮法国选举之间召开，让领导们可以思考一些别的事情。他们也将惦记着九月份的德国选举。

A discussion that has so far mainly been among parties at home will now shift to the real battleground, between Britain and its EU partners. The British team will find that, for those partners, unity of the 27 is the main goal. Mr Tusk’s response says that the EU’s priority is to minimise uncertainty for “our citizens, businesses and member states”. And although the constructive tone of Mrs May’s letter was welcomed, many jibbed at her threat to link security and the fight against crime and terrorism to securing a trade deal.

翻译：一个目前为止主要在国内广泛讨论的事情现在要转移到真正的战场，英国和欧盟合作伙伴。英国将会发现对这些合作伙伴而言27国的团结一致是主要目标。Tusk先生的回应说欧盟的第一要务是最小化对“我们公民、商业和成员国”的不确定性。尽管大家欢迎梅姨信中有建设性的语气，但是很多人拒绝她把安全、打击犯罪、反恐跟贸易联系在一起。

The first tussle with Michel Barnier, a former French foreign minister who is the commission’s Brexit negotiator, will be over whether the talks should start with the terms of divorce and only later discuss a trade deal. This is what the European Council wants. Mrs May will argue that both issues should be negotiated simultaneously, since Article 50 talks of a settlement “taking account of the framework of [a leaving country’s] future relationship”. But the others are likely to stand firm.

翻译：与Michel Barnier（前法国外交部长，现任脱欧调解员）第一场战斗的将是关于是否对话应该先讨论分开再讨论贸易协议。这是欧盟委员会的要求。梅姨将会要求两个问题同时讨论，因为第五十条处理的是“考虑到一个脱欧国家未来关系的框架”。但是其他人可能意见强烈。

Splendid integration

One reason for this is that the divorce talks alone will be difficult enough. The commission’s negotiating mandate will include agreeing on the rights of 3m EU citizens to stay in Britain and 1m Britons to stay in EU countries; finding some way to avert a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic; and settling the exit bill that it claims Britain must pay. The first should be uncontroversial, though it may take some time to settle. The second will be testing, because Britain’s plan to leave the EU’s single market and customs union seems to imply border controls. Yet it is the third that could be the most explosive.

翻译：
辉煌的整合
其中一个原因是单独讨论分开将会足够困难。欧盟委员会的谈判任何包括在以下方面达成共识：3百万欧洲公民留英的权利和1百万英国公民留欧的权利；还有寻求合适的方法来避免北爱尔兰和爱尔兰共和国之间强硬边界；以及处理英国脱欧必须支付的账单。第一个问题没有什么争议，尽管需要花费时间来处理。第二个问题是个考验，因为英国打算离开欧洲单一市场而且海关看起来想要边界控制权。然而第三个问题将是最困难的。

The commission claims that past commitments plus future obligations mean that Britain owes the EU as much as €60bn ($65bn). It believes this debt could be enforced at the International Court of Justice. Mrs May’s letter refers to the matter only obliquely. David Davis, her Brexit secretary, likes to quote a report from the House of Lords citing legal advice that, after Brexit, Britain will owe the EU nothing. More fanciful Brexiteers even claim that the EU owes Britain money for its share in the capital of the European Investment Bank.

翻译：委员会声称过去的承诺以及将来的责任意味着英国欠欧盟高达600亿欧元（650亿美元）。据称这比债务可以通过国际法庭强制执行。梅姨的信对此避重就轻。梅姨的脱欧秘书David Davis想要引用上议院的报告寻求法律建议，声称脱欧后英国不欠欧盟任何债务。更加天真的脱欧派支持者甚至说欧盟欠英国钱因为欧洲投资银行中的资本份额。

Rows over money have always been the bitterest of all in the EU. The departure of such a big net contributor will cause pain, one reason why the commission has talked up the size of the exit bill. The voting rules under Article 50 do not make Britain’s position any easier. The divorce settlement must be approved by a “qualified majority” of EU countries, excluding Britain, and by the European Parliament. The parliament’s Brexit point-man, Guy Verhofstadt, threatens to cause trouble.

翻译：钱的问题一直以来都是欧盟最痛苦的一部分。失去一个这么大的支持者将会产生痛苦，这是欧盟要抓住机会问英国脱欧费的一个原因。第五十条下的投票规则也没有让英国的处境有所改善。分手费必须得到“合格的大多数”欧洲成员国同意，其中包括英国和欧洲议会。议会中负责英国脱欧的人Guy Verhofstadt威胁要引起问题。

There is a serious risk that the budget row will blow up the talks before they start. Mr Barnier has tried to avoid this by suggesting it is possible to agree to some broad principles for a settlement and leave the exact amounts for later haggling. That could take place when the discussion moves on to future trading arrangements. Alas, these could prove even harder to settle than the Article 50 divorce itself.

翻译：这里存在着这样一个风险：在他们开始谈话前预算将会被大家广泛讨论。Barnier先生试图避免这一情况。他提议说可以先就协议的广泛原则达成共识然后再对具体金额谈判。当谈话进行到将来的贸易协议时，这可能发生。哎，这些会被证明比第五十条更加困难。

Mrs May has made clear that her priorities are to take back control of migration, breaching the EU’s principle of free movement of people, and to escape the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This means, as she accepts, that Britain must leave the EU’s single market and customs union. She rejects off-the-shelf models for a new trade relationship. Instead, she wants a bespoke free-trade deal that gives, to the maximum extent possible, barrier-free access to each other’s market.

翻译：梅姨清楚地指出她的首要任务是夺回对移民的控制权，违反欧盟有关人口自由流动的原则，以及脱离欧洲法庭（ECJ）的管理权。这意味着应该必须离开欧洲的单一市场和海关联盟。她拒绝用现有的模式来发展新型贸易关系。相反，她想要定制一个全新的自由贸易协议来最大程度上没有障碍的进入其他的市场。

This will be tricky to agree on, and even harder to ratify. In many countries the opponents of free trade will stand in the way. Negotiations take years: they started between Canada and the EU in 2007 and the resultant CETA deal is still not fully in force. The rules for approving a Britain-EU free-trade deal will be a problem, for as a “mixed” agreement it must be ratified by all national parliaments in the EU as well as some regional ones (including Wallonia’s, which almost kiboshed CETA).

翻译：要在这个问题上达成共识将会很棘手，要批准就更难了。在很多国家，人们还强烈反对自由贸易。谈话花了很多年（他们在2007年开始和加拿大还有欧盟谈判），余下的条款仍然没有完全被执行。允许英国和欧盟维持自由贸易关系的规则将会是个问题，因为一个“混合的”协议必须得到欧洲所有国家议会和地方议会的批准。

Tangled up in red tape

Substituting new rules for those of the single market is even more complicated than agreeing on a free-trade deal, for they intrude into almost every part of business activity. A special number of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy gives an idea of the vast spread of policies that must be changed post-Brexit. Besides the economic and legal impacts, it includes chapters on a new migration regime, financial-services regulation, competition policy, regional aid, state aid, industrial policy, transport, agricultural support and higher education.

翻译：一定数量的牛津政策经济评论指出大量现行政策在脱欧后必须改变。
纠结繁文缛节
取代为单一市场而立的新规则比在自由贸易商达成共识更加复杂，因为它们渗入到商业活动的方方面面。除了经济和法律的影响，它的影响还包括移民政策、金融服务规章、竞争政策、地区援助、国家援助、工业政策、运输、农业支持和高等教育。

Against a tight deadline, the complexity of these issues will be a huge challenge. Anand Menon of King’s College, London, director of The UK in a Changing Europe, an academic network, reckons the Brexit negotiations will be the most difficult and complicated that any post-war government has faced. The Institute for Government, a think-tank, adds that Britain’s civil service is at its smallest since the war; it also notes gaps in the staffing of the relevant departments.

翻译：在紧迫的期限内，这些问题的复杂性将会是巨大的挑战。来自伦敦国王学院的Anand Menon，是一个学术网络机构的负责人，该机构叫做叫做“处在变化的欧洲中的英国”。她指出英国的脱欧将是战后政府面对的最困难最复杂的谈判。一个思想智库组织“政府机构”补充道英国的公民服务现在处在战后的最低水平；还提到了相关部门人员之间会存在间隙。

Trade negotiators insist a deal will take longer than two years. Some Brexiteers disagree, pointing out that, unlike normal trade talks, the two sides start in complete convergence, since Britain has been an EU member for 44 years. To cement this, they note that the misnamed Great Repeal Bill, promised by the government this week, will translate almost all current EU laws into British law. Yet it is not the starting point that matters, but what happens when a post-Brexit Britain freed from the ECJ begins to diverge from the EU’s norms.

翻译：贸易谈判者坚持一个协议需要超过两年时间。一些脱欧支持者反对，指出和普通贸易谈判不一样，双方实在合作的起点上开始的，因为英国已经成为欧盟成员国44年了。为了支持自己的观点，他们还指出那个名不符其实的大废除法案（政府这周答应的）将会被翻译包括英国法律在内的所有现存的欧洲法律。然而，重要的不是这个，而重要的是当脱欧后的英国不再受欧洲法庭的限制，开始脱离欧洲的标准后会发生什么事情。

In truth, the nub of the single market is not its scrapping of tariffs or even customs checks, but its getting rid of myriad non-tariff barriers thrown up by different rules and standards. The government is hinting that, for practical reasons, it might stick with some EU regulators (such as, perhaps, the European Medicines Agency) for some time after Brexit. But as Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group, a consultancy, says, this ducks the point that, if Britain wants to retain barrier-free access to the single market, it may have to observe all EU regulatory standards anyway.

翻译：事实上，单一市场的焦点不在于废除关税甚至是海关检查，而在于消除无数由不同规则和标准产生的非关税壁垒。出于实际的原因，政府在暗示在脱欧后的一段时间，它可能还会遵守一些欧洲的规定（例如，可能，欧洲药品管理局）。但是正如Mujtaba Rahman所说，如果英国想要保留无壁垒进入单一市场的方式，它可能必须遵守欧盟的其他标准。

Another argument from Brexiteers confronted by Article 50’s two-year deadline is that there is little to fear if there is no deal at all. Mrs May herself has insisted that “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain”, though she did not repeat this in her letter. No deal means reverting to trade on World Trade Organisation terms. As Open Britain, another think-tank, notes, this implies not just all of the EU’s non-tariff barriers, but tariffs of 10% on cars, 15% on food and 36% on dairy products. It would end Britain’s access to the EU’s trade deals with 53 other countries. Last year the Treasury said this option would reduce GDP by 7.5% after 15 years. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs committee recently warned against the no-deal option.

翻译：另外一个来自脱欧派的有关第五十条两年期限的争议是不用担心是否将没有合约。梅姨自己坚持“对英国来说，没有合约比有坏合约强”，尽管她没有在信中这么说。没有合约意味着退回到WTO。另一个叫做Open Britain的智库指出这暗示不仅是欧盟的所有无关税壁垒，而是对车施加10%关税，对食物施加15%关税，对日用品施加36%关税。这将会终止英国与欧盟的53个贸易伙伴的关系。去年国库部门说这个选择将会让GDP在15年后减少7.5%。下议院外事委员会警告没有合约的这个选项。

If a comprehensive trade agreement cannot be made in two years, an obvious conclusion follows: some transitional arrangement will be needed after March 2019. Mrs May’s letter nods to this by talking about “implementation periods”. The trouble is that any such arrangement may itself be hard to agree on, especially if there is lack of clarity over the final destination. The simplest idea is to prolong the status quo, but that may be hard for Mrs May to sell at home if it entails both free movement of people and a role for the ECJ.

翻译：如果两年内广泛的贸易协议难以达成的话，很明显的结论就是2019年三月以后一些过渡性的协议将是必要的。梅姨在信中提到了“执行时期”，对此想法表示赞同。问题是这种协议本身就很难达成共识，特别是在缺乏在结果不明确的情况下。最简单的办法是延长状态，但是如果让人们自由进入英国以及仍然被ECJ管控的话，会让梅姨在国内很为难。

And then there are the implications for the United Kingdom. Some policies needing redesign post-Brexit, such as fisheries, are matters for devolved governments. This week the Scottish Parliament backed the demand of its first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, for a second independence referendum. In Northern Ireland, where attempts to form a new power-sharing executive have broken down again, Sinn Fein is calling for a referendum on whether to join the Irish republic. Mrs May has vowed to protect the “precious, precious union”, but she knows that both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU last June.

翻译：然后，这里有一些对英国的暗示。对于政府而言，在脱欧后重新制定一些政策（如渔业）至关重要。这周，苏格兰议会支持了首脑Nicola Sturgeon举行第二次公投的要求。在北爱尔兰，政府正在试图形成曾经失败的新型力量共享统治，Sinn Fein 呼吁就是否加入爱尔兰共和国进行公投。梅姨承诺保护“宝贵的联盟”，但是她知道苏格兰和北爱尔兰在去年六月都投票留在欧洲。

At least she can take comfort in the ineffectiveness of the opposition at home. Both Labour and the UK Independence Party are beset by weak leadership and internal feuding. Yet her control over Parliament is not absolute. Her working majority is just 17. Passage of the Great Repeal Bill may be contentious, and it is only the first of up to 15 parliamentary bills necessitated by Brexit. Several MPs are loudly promising to hold Mrs May and Mr Davis to account over their Brexit promises. This week Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, produced six tests for judging if Labour should support the final deal, while a cross-party group under the auspices of Open Britain came up with ten points. The House of Lords, most of whose members are strongly anti-Brexit, may also make difficulties for Mrs May.

翻译：至少她可以从国内反对的无效中得到安慰。工党和英国独立党都被弱势的领导和内部争斗所困扰。然而她对议会的控制不是绝对的。为她工作的大多数只有17. 大废除法案的通过将会很有争议，而这仅是脱欧后需要处理的15个法案中的第一个。一些国会议员大声承诺让梅姨和Davis先生恪守他们的脱欧承诺。这周影子脱欧秘书Keir Starmer制定了六项测试，以判断工党是否应该支持最终协议，而在英国不公开的跨党派组织则提出了十点。大多数成员都强烈反对脱欧的上议院也许会让梅姨有困难。

In the end, however, her biggest problem may not be with her opponents or with her EU partners across the negotiating table. As so many previous Tory prime ministers have found, it will be with her own backbenchers. Hardline Brexiteers are ready to denounce any compromise in the negotiations as a betrayal. Mrs May has raised their expectations, as well as those of voters, about the benefits of Brexit. When it becomes clear that there are costs instead, she may find her high popularity ratings fast withering away.

翻译：然而，最后她最大的问题可能不是她的对手或者欧盟谈判席上的伙伴。正如之前很多保守党首相发现的那样，可能是她自己的后座议员。强硬的脱欧支持者准备将谈判中的任何妥协谴责成背叛。梅姨已经让他们期待会从脱欧中受益。当随之而来的代价浮出水面时，她将发现她的高人气评分将快速消失。

版权声明：文章版权归原杂志和作者所有。翻译仅为英语学习之用。谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。
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