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

LONDON (AP) — A steady trickle of trucks rolled off ferries and trains on either side of the English Channel on Friday, a quiet New Year’s Day 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 changes now that the U.K. has fully left the economic embrace of the 27-nation bloc, the final stage of Brexit.

“For the majority of trucks they won’t even notice the difference,” said John Keefe, spokesman for Eurotunnel, the railway tunnel that carries vehicles under the Channel. “There was always the risk that if this happened at a busy time then we could run into some difficulties, but it’s happening overnight on a bank holiday and a long weekend.”

Britain left the European bloc’s vast single market for people, goods and services at 11 p.m. London time, midnight in Brussels, on Thursday, in the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II. A new U.K.-EU trade deal will bring new restrictions and red tape, but for British Brexit supporters, it means reclaiming national independence from the EU and its web of rules.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose support for Brexit helped push the country out of the EU, called it “an amazing moment for this country.”

“We have our freedom in our hands, and it is up to us to make the most of it,” he said in a New Year’s video message.

The break comes 11 months after a political Brexit that left the two sides in the limbo of a “transition period” in which EU rights and rules continued to apply to Britain.

The trade agreement sealed on Christmas Eve after months of tense negotiations ensures that Britain and the EU can continue to buy and sell goods...