The EU is setting a test that is impossible to meet

Brussels’ refusal to work constructively on finding alternatives to the backstop risks scuppering a deal

Attention has been focused on Westminster this week, yet in Brussels we have seen serious and significant talks take place between the UK and the EU. On Thursday I spoke to Michel Barnier about the Brexit negotiations, and over the past few weeks I’ve also visited my counterparts in France, Finland, Sweden and Denmark.

This weekend I travelled to Italy to speak to leading international business people and senior EU politicians. And tomorrow the Prime Minister is meeting with the Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar. The PM’s sherpa, David Frost, and his team have met officials from the European Commission twice during the past week for lengthy and productive discussions, and further talks will take place this week.

We are doing everything we can

to ditch the anti-democratic Irish backstop and reach a deal. We started this negotiation with both sides committed to finding flexible and creative solutions. This is the spirit that we must continue to channel. It is also a sentiment that I have heard repeatedly on my travels to European capitals over the summer. Member states have told me they want to look at new solutions.

Brussels, however, is setting a test that is impossible to meet. It continues to say that it is defending three key objectives – avoiding a hard border, protecting the single market and preserving the all-island of Ireland economy. But continuing to insist on the inclusion of the backstop means that the EU is also insisting on a commitment for the UK to remain in the customs union and parts of the single market. For a country that has voted to leave the European Union, this is a demand that simply cannot be met.

The EU also insists that the backstop remains in place unless we identify all of the legally operative solutions to replace it before October 31. Of course we are ready to put forward legal text by that date. But operational details can, and should, be developed and shaped during the transition period after we have left. This kind of molecular detail does not have to be set out in totality by October 31.

The transition period, which runs until at least December 31 2020, gives us time to enhance work on both sides to remove the need for the inescapable vortex that is the backstop. But what the EU seems blind to is that in refusing to compromise on the backstop, it is in fact making no deal more likely.

By demanding everything now, it is crystallising the future risk this November. The EU says it is insisting on the backstop because it is committed to avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. It says this is because of its full-throated support for protecting the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement – which we, of course, share. But the backstop is not the only solution compatible with the Good Friday Agreement.

We are proposing perfectly reasonable alternative solutions. For example, we have suggested a creative way of solving the problems of trade in food and animals across the island of Ireland, with the consent of all parties and institutions with an interest. Yet sometimes it seems that nothing we suggest goes far enough and, no matter how creative our solutions, the response is a statement of openness which masks a closed position.

We are serious about finding solutions – and the European Commission should recognise this. It does not help when they say we are bringing no new ideas to the table. We hope this will change, because this is no way to agree a deal. It is a path to a no-deal scenario for which most EU member states are operationally unprepared.

Too many in the EU still seem to hope the issue can be resolved by the UK remaining in its single market. Or, indeed, even the EU itself.

The simple fact is that, with imagination, compromise and goodwill, we can solve this issue by October 31. And we can solve it in a way that gives confidence to the EU that we can continue to have a good relationship for the future. That is what we all want and that is what we can achieve.

We are told again and again that it is for London to come to Brussels and provide the solutions.

What matters is not where we solve this, but how.

With a spirit of genuine compromise and flexibility, I am confident we can reach a deal. It requires both sides to step up to the challenge.