EU chief says border checks ‘unavoidable’
Brexit pledge by taoiseach and British pm in jeopardy
BORDERS will return between North and South in the event of Brexit, the EU’S chief negotiator warned yesterday.
Michel Barnier has said this will be inevitable under international law when Britain leaves the EU.
This flies in the face of the so-called guarantee the Taoiseach boasted of before Christmas that there would not be any hard border.
A draft agreement at the end of phase one of the Brexit negotiations saw Leo Varadkar and British Prime Minister Theresa May claim the border issue had been settled and would not need to be revisited.
Mr Barnier has cast serious doubt on all of this now with comments he made in Europe.
He said: “It is important to tell the truth. A UK decision to leave the single market and to leave the customs union would make border checks unavoidable.”
Brexit talks between the UK and Europe have hit deadlock this weekend with three main sticking points holding up negotiations.
These are the UK’S refusal to guarantee permanent rights to EU nationals during a planned transition period between March 29, 2019 (the formal exit from the EU date) and December 31 2020, the right of the UK to new EU laws during the transition period and whether British politicians could participate in new justice and home affairs policies during transition.
Mr Barnier warned if that these can’t be agreed then there will be no grace period.
Labour leader Brendan Howlin hit out yesterday and said: “Today Michel Barnier has confirmed our worst fears, by stating that a UK decision to leave the single market and customs union would make a hard border unavoidable.
“It is bizarre to see reported today the comments of Minister of State for Europe Mcentee on BBC Radio 4 that Ireland wants to hear what the UK proposals are to solve the Border issue when the Government is so confident the agreement in place will resolve it.
“The Taoiseach must now respond to the latest developments, which undermine his comments before Christmas that the commitment given by the UK was ‘politically bullet-proofed’, and was rock solid and cast iron.
“As efforts are made to put a legal text in place on the December agreement, the disagreements over the transition period show the difficulty in providing substance to the commitment to retain full regulatory alignment on our island.”
Today Michel Barnier has confirmed our worst fears BRENDAN howlin Labour CHIEF YESTERDAY
THE EU’S chief negotiator is to be commended for stating what has been glaringly obvious for some time.
What Michel Barnier is saying is that if there’s a hard Brexit there will be a hard border, it’s as simple as that.
If the British Government leaves the single market and the customs union, and that’s Prime Minister Theresa May’s stated intention, a hard border is “unavoidable”.
While the Taoiseach boasted he got a guarantee there would be no return to the bad old days when there were checkpoints and posts along the border, it appears the British have no means of delivering on this promise.
With just over a year before the UK exits the Union it appears the British government have still not come up with any workable solution as to how to avoid a hard border.
Indeed it appears to completely forget about the situation on this island until it is forcefully brought to their attention.
What Mr Barnier did yesterday was explode the spurious and vague claims there could be some form of technological solution to what is a political problem.
As the countdown to Brexit begins the Tory Party is now being confronted with something it has avoided since the decision to leave the EU .... the stark reality of having made what is perhaps the biggest mistake in modern British history.