May’s ‘common rulebook’ on avoiding a hard border
ON page two of her Brexit White Paper, Theresa May vows that her vision of Brexit will meet all of the UK’s commitments to Ireland and to Northern Ireland.
The difficulty is, these commitments – honouring the Good Friday Agreement and avoiding a hard border – are threatened by the UK’s sworn objectives of leaving the Customs Union and Single Market.
But Mrs May believes this can be done – through a closely knitted economic relationship ‘in a way that respects the EU’s autonomy without harming the UK’s constitutional and economic integrity’.
The paper outlines a commitment to maintaining the peace process and restoring the devolved institutions at Stormont.
It also proposes a ‘free trade area for goods’ that will ensure businesses in the UK and the EU can continue operating through their current supply chains and avoid the need for customs and regulatory checks on the border.
The single electricity market that has operated across the island of Ireland for over a decade will too be preserved, while the current transport arrangements will be maintained under the UK proposals.
This arrangement, the paper says, will ensure that the ‘backstop’ solution for avoiding a hard border ‘will not have to be used’.
However, it does commit that the UK ‘will agree’ an operational legal text with the EU to be included in the Withdrawal Agreement.
The paper proposes a ‘common rulebook’, that would keep the UK widely aligned to EU standards and procedures as a way of avoiding the need for a hard border.
It states: ‘The UK’s proposal for a common rulebook on agri-food encompasses those rules that must be checked at the border.
‘The UK and the EU have set the global standard for the protection of human, animal and plant health, and both have set an ambition to maintain high standards in the future. As for manufactured goods, certainty around a common rulebook is necessary to reassure the UK and the EU that agri-food products in circulation in their respective markets meet the necessary regulatory requirements.
‘This would remove the need to undertake additional regulatory checks at the border – avoiding the need for any physical infrastructure, such as border inspection posts at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
‘A common rulebook would also protect integrated supply chains, trade between the UK and the EU, and consumers and biosecurity,’ the paper says.