Irish border demands threaten trade talks
BRITISH hopes of opening Brexit trade and transition talks next month were thrown into renewed doubt last night as it emerged that Ireland was making fresh demands over the border question, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
The toughened Irish stance, reflected in a leaked European Commission document obtained by this newspaper, blindsided British officials at Brexit negotiations in Brussels yesterday. British officials had believed that the question of how to avoid creating a hard Irish border when the UK quits the EU single market and customs union had been “parked” until the EU opened talks over trade and the future relationship.
However, the leaked talking points paper, entitled “Dialogue on Ireland/ Northern Ireland”, shows Ireland is now pushing hard for concrete reassurance on the border question ahead of the crucial EU leaders’ summit in December.
The one-page paper states that in order to preserve the Good Friday Agree- ment, the Brexit divorce deal must respect “the integrity of the internal market and the customs union”, of which Ireland will remain a member.
It adds that it is “essential” that the UK commits to avoiding a hard border by remaining part of the EU Customs Union and continues to abide by the “rules of the internal market and customs union”.
It concludes that Britain must ensure “no emergence of regulatory divergence” from the rules of the EU
single market and the customs union, which are “necessary for North-south co-operation, the all-island economy and the protection of the Good Friday Agreement”.
The hardline Irish position, which was discussed at the EU’S Brexit working group ahead of yesterday’s talks, was described by a senior EU source as reflecting the “state of play” on the Irish question and reflected the “guiding principles” of the EU’S approach to the problem. The Telegraph understands that Dublin is demanding that Britain sign up to around 100 EU rules and regulations, including many covering customs and agriculture, in order to ensure an open trade border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Dublin’s demands present an apparently impossible dilemma to London, requiring either the UK remains in the EU Customs Union and accepts the rules for the entire UK, or gives Northern Ireland special status in the EU that would undermine the territorial integrity of the UK.
British officials have warned that any attempt to create a “special status” for Northern Ireland would have a potentially catastrophic destabilising effect on the Good Friday Agreement, pitting Unionists and Nationalists against each other.
In August, the UK proposed creating an invisible border that would use technology to create as “frictionless and seamless a border as possible”, but the proposals were swiftly dismissed as “magical thinking” by senior EU officials.
The Irish pushback comes at a crucial moment in the Brexit process, which is deadlocked over the Brexit bill, but now risks foundering or being delayed afresh over the question of Northern Ireland.
A second EU source said that Dublin was “pulling the levers” and had decided to use tensions over the bill as the moment to “exert maximum leverage” and extract concessions from the UK.
“Dublin sees their leverage point is now, as Britain fights to get a ‘sufficient progress’ designation, not in phase two,” the source added.
The gambit comes just days after James Brokenshire, the Northern Ireland Secretary, travelled to Brussels, and appeared to dismiss the Irish position, telling a seminar that it was “difficult to imagine how Northern Ireland could somehow remain ‘in’ [the EU]”.