Irish Daily Mail

Next Brexit option? Whole of UK stays in Customs Union

- By Michael McHugh and Senan Molony senan.molony@dailymail.ie

THE whole of the UK may become aligned to the EU Customs Union, it has emerged.

The new possibilit­y arises from the DUP’s insistence that the North must be treated the same as the rest of the UK post Brexit and that there can be no border down the Irish Sea.

However, the arrangemen­t for all of the UK might only last a few years until it can come up with a proper solution for a customs agreement along the border.

It is expected, however, that the UK-wide solution would face fierce resistance from hardline Brexiteers within the British cabinet.

The Irish Government and the EU negotiatin­g task force headed by Michel Barnier would welcome the full alignment, which would be agreed for a period of several years while technologi­cal or other solutions are devised.

The scenario would mean that the backstop achieved by Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney would bring not only the North but also England, Scotcrossi­ng Options: Karen Bradley land and Wales into seamless alignment with EU trading rules, allowing easier movement of UK goods into the European Union.

Meanwhile, the British cabinet continues to clash over the options open for a Northern Ireland-only agreement with the EU.

Yesterday, Northern secretary Karen Bradley appeared to strongly back the softer ‘customs agreement’ over the hardline ‘maximum facilitati­on’, which would likely see video cameras and drones recording details of trucks the Irish border as part of a tariff agreement with the EU. Ms Bradley warned yesterday that any attempt to create permanent structures on the border might be physically attacked.

‘We have to be clear why having new physical infrastruc­ture would be a problem at the border and it is the security situation,’ she told MPs.

However, she said some infrastruc­ture could be needed away from the border to enforce a UK/EU customs deal. ‘We are committed to no new physical infrastruc­ture at the border, no new checks or controls at the border,’ she told the House of Commons European scrutiny select committee yesterday.

‘We have said there will be no automatic number plate recognitio­n cameras, no new cameras, we have been clear that there will be no new physical infrastruc­ture,’ she said. She explained that the border had 270 crossings, some of them unmarked roads and rural lanes and she feared that they would be attacked.

Her comments come less than a month after former taoiseach Bertie Ahern warned that people living along the border will pull down any new infrastruc­ture ‘with their bare hands’ and that ‘you wouldn’t have to wait for violence’ among border communitie­s if the British tried to install cameras and border posts.

Last month Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney, warned that ‘technology, cameras and drones’ would not resolve customs problems along the Irish border – a clear reference to hardliners in the British cabinet who believe that high technology is the best solution for tariff collection between the North and the Republic.

Ms Bradley is against the ‘maximum facilitati­on’ model for a high-tech border and favours the other option being considered by British ministers, which is known as the new customs partnershi­p. The customs partnershi­p is despised by Brexit hardliners such as foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, who denounced it last week as ‘crazy’.

‘No new checks or controls’

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