Editorial Comment:
In her Mansion House speech six weeks ago, setting out the Government’s rebooted Brexit policy, Theresa May outlined two options for customs arrangements to deliver the commitment to a “frictionless border” between the UK and the EU in Ireland and at the Channel ports. One involves the UK mirroring the EU’S requirements for imports from the rest of the world, applying the same tariffs and rules of origin as the EU for those goods arriving in the UK and intended for the EU. The second would require a joint agreement to implement a range of measures to minimise frictions to trade and simplify arrangements for moving goods across the border. Goods moving between the UK and the rest of the world would be allowed to travel through the EU without paying EU duties and vice versa. So-called trusted trader schemes and advanced IT solutions would be deployed so that vehicles do not need to stop at the border. Both of these options have so far been rejected by EU negotiators; but the Cabinet’s Brexit committee will today seek an agreement around one of them.
The idea of the UK effectively acting as the EU’S external frontier and collecting its tariffs is seen as a non-starter by Tory Brexiteers. They say it is complex, would take years to introduce and would destroy the UK’S chances of obtaining free trade deals because third countries would have to pay Eu-level tariffs and then try to prove the goods ended up on the UK market.
The second option, however, would require technological infrastructure, such as cameras, and would not entirely eliminate the need for checks at the UK-EU frontier in Ireland. This is seen as failing to meet the pledge not to introduce a “hard border”.
There is a danger of a crisis being triggered by a definitional misunderstanding. A border has existed between Ireland and Northern Ireland for nearly 100 years and the sort of infrastructure needed to enforce the second option would not constitute a “hard” border in most people’s books. Some sort of unobtrusive and light-touch infrastructure will inevitably be needed to monitor the arrangements, but this should not be an obstacle to agreement.
Michel Barnier this week said Britain had to come up with “fresh thinking” to avoid the talks collapsing. But if all sides took a sensible and pragmatic approach a solution should be eminently achievable.