Ireland has upper hand over U.K. in Brexit talks
Tensions that have subsided since 1998 could come back if there isn’t an open border
For one week in 2017, Ireland was more powerful than its dominant neighbour Britain.
On Monday, British Prime Minister Theresa May had to return from Brussels without the crucial Brexit deal needed to negotiate the country’s future relations with the European Union. The sudden difficulties that emerged in Brussels were mainly rooted in Irish history, and they will likely continue to dominate future negotiations even though an agreement was reached on Friday.
Among the EU’s core principles is the free movement of goods and labour, which normally would automatically lapse once a member state, such as the United Kingdom, leaves the union. However, the Dublinbased Irish government had threatened to veto any Brexit deal that would result in a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which belongs to the United Kingdom.
To Britain, Ireland’s threatened veto may have been the reflex of a smaller nation punching far above its weight.
But to Ireland, it was a matter of preserving peace.
The two countries are currently not separated by any visible border — which is quite common within the European Union — and there were fears that a reintroduction of checkpoints could threaten the peace process on the island, which remains volatile. Whereas Britain is still set to leave the European Union’s single market, May has now promised that Northern Ireland will maintain “full alignment” with EU customs and trade regulations and be able to uphold its borderless trade with European Union member Ireland. The deal will please the government in Dublin and most voters in Northern Ireland, who predominantly favoured staying in the European Union in last year’s referendum.
The Irish ties have helped to overcome a decades-long divide and are needed to sustain peace, pro-EU campaigners argue.
The origins of that dispute go back to the early 1920s, when an Irish revolt against British rule gained momentum. As a result, the island was split into a separate, independent country in the south and into less autonomous Northern Ireland, which has remained part of the United Kingdom ever since.