Brexit transition will end Dec 2020: May

Satellite repayment sought

LONDON/DUBLIN, May 24, (RTRS): Britain will end its implementation period with the European Union after Brexit in December 2020, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday, denying a media report that the government was seeking a new transition until 2023.

The spokeswoman repeated Britain’s stance that the transition period would end in December 2020 after The Times newspaper reported that May would propose another transition covering customs and trade to run from 2021 until 2023 to avoid the need for infrastructure or checks on the Irish border.

Northern Ireland will be Britain’s only land frontier with the European Union after Brexit. Both sides say they are committed to keeping the border with the Irish Republic open, but finding a practical solution has proved elusive so far.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who enjoys strong support from the other EU states, said Dublin could not agree to a time-limited solution.

“Well 2023 won’t do. The Irish government won’t be able to agree to a situation where we put off a fundamental decision like that,” Varadkar told Ireland’s Newstalk radio station.

The EU and Dublin insist the Brexit treaty must lock in a backstop arrangement in case a future trade pact does not remove the need for border controls. London signed up for this last month but disagrees with the EU’s means of achieving it.

Varadkar said: “The whole purpose of having the backstop is that that’s a guarantee that is there in perpetuity and just kicking the can down the road on the basis that maybe we can come up with some sort of legal or technological solutions that don’t exist now, that’s not something we could accept.”

The British government says it will soon propose an alternative backstop idea to the EU, which would see Britain applying the bloc’s external tariffs for a limited period beyond December 2020 if there is any delay on ratification or on introducing new customs arrangements.

May

Meanwhile, British Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn attacked the government’s Brexit plans on Thursday, saying its future customs proposals would undermine an open border on the island of Ireland that “is a symbol of peace”.

In a speech at Northern Ireland’s Queen’s University, he also called for all parties to revive the spirit of the Good Friday peace agreement to deliver economic justice and prosperity in Northern Ireland.

In his first major visit to the British province since becoming leader in 2015, he said Labour would not support any Brexit deal that includes a return to a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, which some fear could inflame violence.

Corbyn said Labour’s proposal for a new, comprehensive UK-EU customs union, with a British say on future trade deals and arrangements, coupled with a new, strong relationship with the EU single market would prevent communities being divided.

“The British government is making a mess of these negotiations. Week after week it becomes clearer and clearer that they are too divided to make the right choices and too weak to get a good Brexit deal,” he said.

“The Conservative government talks about how technology could avoid a hard border under their plans, and how new systems can provide checks and collect tariffs. But even if that were true, it misses the point,” he said, adding that an open border showed two communities living together after years of conflict.

Businesses will face a cost of up to 20 billion pounds ($27 billion) a year to comply with the customs arrangement favoured by the keenest Brexit supporters within the cabinet, Britain’s most senior tax official said on Wednesday.

“You need to think about the ‘highly streamlined customs arrangement’ costing businesses somewhere in the late teens of billions of pounds, somewhere between 17 and 20 billion,” Jon Thompson, permanent secretary at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, told lawmakers.

It appears to be the first official cost estimate for the customs arrangement known as “max fac” or “maximum facilitation”, and could be a setback for supporters such as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson who favour a clean break with the EU after Britain leaves the bloc next year.

Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to take Britain out of the customs union with the EU, a step she argues is necessary so that London can strike its own independent trade deals with countries around the world.

But May’s government has yet to set out to the EU’s satisfaction how it would achieve that without erecting a land border to control goods between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which Britain has promised it will not do.

The government is considering two possible options in a debate that has exposed a deep rift within May’s cabinet between those who favour a clean break with Europe and those willing to accept closer cooperation with Brussels.

LONDON:

Opposition

Also:

Britain was on Thursday set to demand the European Union repay £1 billion ($1.34 billion, 1.14 billion euros) if it is excluded from the Galileo satellite project post-Brexit, according to newspaper reports.

Britain’s Department for Exiting for the European Union was expected Thursday to release a report on the satellite navigation project, and Brussels’ decision to deny London access to its encrypted signals.

It is expected to raise the possibility of recovering Britain’s £1 billion investment in the system, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Brussels cited legal issues about sharing sensitive information with a non-member state during its move to shut British businesses out of the 10 billion euro project.

Britain played a major role in developing Galileo, an alternative to the US’s GPS, which is expected to be fully operational in 2026.

London has warned that being frozen out could have implications for the its future defence partnership with the EU.

“The arrangements for any UK cooperation on Galileo are an important test of the depth of operational cooperation and information-sharing envisaged under the security partnership,” it said earlier.

It demands continued British access to the secure signal and a right to compete for contracts.