Arlene: EU text ‘unacceptable’
ARLENE Foster has hit out at the European Union’s draft Brexit withdrawal agreement, saying it has not been faithful to the assurances given to the DUP in December.
The Democratic Unionist Party leader said chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier’s interpretation of the December report was unfair as it had ignored a clause to ensure frictionless borders between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Mrs Foster made her feelings on the ‘unacceptable’ legal text known at a face-to-face meeting with Mr Barnier in Brussels yesterday.
She raised concerns that the EU’s legal text did not include a clause included in the December joint report to ‘ensure the same unfettered access for the North’s businesses to the whole of the United Kingdom internal market’.
She said the draft withdrawal text published last week implied there could be controls between Northern Ireland and Britain as part of a common regulatory area on the island of Ireland.
‘He has put forward an EU draft text that not only we find unacceptable, the British government finds unacceptable, the (British) Labour Party finds it unacceptable, so there will be a need to negotiate from that,’ Mrs Foster added.
She also hit out at the report for failing to include all three options on avoiding a hard border that were included in the joint report.
Only Option C – the ‘backstop’ – was contained in detail in the draft withdrawal agreement, as the EU said the UK had not provided enough detail on options A and B. These involve either a free-flowing trade agreement yet to be negotiated between the EU and UK, or bespoke technological solutions.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Taoiseach has rejected suggestions from the DUP’s leader in Westminster, Nigel Dodds, that Mr Varadkar had adopted an ‘aggressive stance’ towards unionists, Northern Ireland and the UK government during Brexit talks.
Mr Varadkar’s spokesman said he had always been ‘open and engaging’ in his approach to negotiations, and wants the best for the ‘people of the Republic of Ireland and of Northern Ireland’.