The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to ratify the EU's post-Brexit trade deal with Britain, but warned London to stick to its commitments, officials said Wednesday.
The vote ratifies the bare bones trade deal that was sealed on Christmas Eve after nine months of bad-tempered negotiations and has been in force provisionally since January 1.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the vote "the final step in a long journey".
He said ratification would provide "stability" in UK-EU relations, while his chief negotiator in the talks, David Frost, said it brought "certainty and allows us to focus on the future".
The deal provides the framework for Britain's new relationship with the 27-member union, five years after British voters shocked the world by voting to end its 47-year membership.
In the final tally, 660 MEPs voted in favour of the trade deal, five against with 32 abstentions, results showed.
"Today the European Parliament voted on the most far-reaching agreement the EU has ever reached with a third country," the president of the assembly, David Sassoli, said.
"This can form the foundation on which we build a new forward-looking EU-UK relationship," he said, warning that MEPs would monitor the implementation of the deal and "not accept any backsliding from the UK government."
"You cannot have the advantages of EU membership while being on the outside. However, this agreement goes a long way to mitigate its worst consequences."
The vote comes amid multiple feuds over the UK's implementation of Brexit agreements and angry finger-pointing about the supply of the Covid-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca.
In a final debate in parliament, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen assured MEPs that the agreement had "real teeth" and that any deviation by London from the pact would have consequences.
"And let me be very clear: We do not want to have to use these tools, but we will not hesitate to use them if necessary."
Britain's Brexit minister David Frost said he "hugely" welcomed the vote to approve the deal he helped negotiate during months of fraught talks with EU counterpart Michel Barnier.
"Hope we can now begin a new chapter together as Europeans, characterised by friendly cooperation between sovereign equals," Frost wrote on Twitter.
- Brexit saga -
The vote ends five years of a Brexit saga in which Britain and Europe also sealed a divorce deal that bitterly divided the UK and saw the future of peace on the island of Ireland thrust into doubt.
A recent wave of rioting in the British province of Northern Ireland has been blamed on the consequences of Brexit arrangements with talks underway in Brussels and London to find a long-term solutions.
Britain left the EU on January 30 2020, but its new life with Europe only really began after a transition period ended on December 31, when London was no longer bound by the bloc's laws and rules.
Officially called a trade and cooperation agreement (TCA), the deal creates a new relationship that provides for zero tariffs and zero quotas on goods traded between the EU and UK.
But it is less ambitious than many Europeans had hoped for, with nothing on foreign policy and defence nor any commitment to close alignment on environment, health and other regulations.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who backed Brexit, pointedly refused deeper harmonisation with the EU, saying that UK must defend its newly found sovereignty.
Cross-Channel trade volumes have plummeted in consequence, with EU imports from the UK down by half in the first two months of the deal's application.