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Quiet New Year gives breathing room after UK-EU Brexit split

  • By Jill Lawless/AP
People watch the first truck, from Estonia, entering the Eurotunnel terminal Friday, Jan.1, 2021 in Coquelles, northern France. Eleven months after Britain's formal departure from the EU, Brexit becomes a fact of daily life on Friday, once a transition period ends and the U.K. fully leaves the world's most powerful trading bloc. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, Pool)

 Lewis Joly / AP

People watch the first truck, from Estonia, entering the Eurotunnel terminal Friday, Jan.1, 2021 in Coquelles, northern France. Eleven months after Britain's formal departure from the EU, Brexit becomes a fact of daily life on Friday, once a transition period ends and the U.K. fully leaves the world's most powerful trading bloc. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, Pool)

(London)  —  A steady trickle of trucks is rolling off ferries and trains on both sides of the English Channel after a seismic overnight shift in relations between the European Union and Britain.

The busy goods route between southeast England and northwest France is on the front line of the changes now that the U.K. has fully left the economic embrace of the 27-nation bloc, the final stage of Brexit.

But light traffic over the New Year holiday has reduced the impact of the change.

A Eurotunnel spokesman says the majority of trucks “won’t even notice the difference.”

Britain left the European bloc’s single market on Thursday night, in the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II.

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