Unionists reject Barnier’s offer of compromise over imports

THE DUP have rejected an EU offer of compromise on its proposals for the border after Brexit.

In order to ‘de-dramatise’ the main obstacle to a withdrawal deal, EU negotiator Michel Barnier suggested arrangements could be made to conduct the majority of checks on imports and exports away from the border itself.

He warned that time was running out, with the ‘moment of truth’ coming at the next full EU summit in Brussels on October 18.

But the Democratic Unionist Party, which props up Theresa May’s minority Tory government, dismissed Mr Barnier’s proposals as unpalatable, because they would involve a customs border between the North and the rest of the UK. ‘It still means a border down the Irish Sea, although with different kinds of checks,’ said the party’s deputy leader Nigel Dodds.

‘The fact is that both Theresa May and the [British] Labour Party have said no British prime minister could accept such a concept. It is not just unionists who object.’

Former shadow Northern Ireland secretary Owen Smith, a backer of the Best for Britain campaign for a second EU referendum, said Mr Dodds’s response had ‘sunk Barnier’s improved offer on Northern Ireland before he has even floated it’.

Mr Barnier was speaking before the EU summit in Salzburg, Austria yesterday. It was the first time EU leaders met since Mrs May published her Brexit blueprint, known as the Chequers proposal.

Mrs May will be having formal face-toface talks with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar this morning.

She may talk to other leaders in the margins of the summit in an effort to win backing for her EU-leaning Chequers proposal, which has met fierce resistance from within the ranks of her own Conservative Party.