Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Hopes rise for Brexit agreement
EU meeting seen as last chance before withdrawal deadline
LUXEMBOURG — European Union officials were hoping Tuesday that — after more than three years of false starts and sudden reversals — a Brexit deal with Britain might be in sight.
The bloc said that it might be possible to strike a divorce deal by Thursday’s EU leaders’ summit, which comes just two weeks before the U.K.’s scheduled departure date of Oct. 31. One major proviso: The British government must make more compromises to seal an agreement in the coming days.
Britain and the EU have been here before — within sight of a deal only to see it dashed — but a surge in the British pound Tuesday indicated hope that this time could be different.
The currency rose against the dollar to its highest level in months.
Even though many questions remain, diplomats made it clear that both sides were within touching distance of a deal for the first time since a U.K. withdrawal plan fell apart in the British House of Commons in March.
Britain is scheduled to leave the EU on Oct. 31, and this week’s EU leaders’ meeting — the last scheduled summit before the withdrawal deadline — was considered the last opportunity to approve a divorce agreement. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson insists his country will leave at the end of the month with or without an agreement, although U.K. lawmakers are determined to push for another delay rather than risk a no-deal departure.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said at a meeting of the bloc’s ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday that the main challenge now is to turn the new British proposals on the complex Irish border issue into something legally binding. EU member Ireland has a land border with the U.K.’s Northern Ireland, and both want to keep goods and people flowing freely across the currently invisible border.
A frictionless border underpins both the local economy and the 1998 peace accord that ended decades of Catholic-Protestant violence in Northern Ireland. But once Britain exits, that border will turn into an external EU frontier that the bloc wants to keep secure.
Barnier wants a clear answer by today so EU capitals can prepare for the bloc’s two-day summit that begins Thursday.
The big question is how far Johnson’s government is prepared to budge on its insistence that the U.K., including Northern Ireland, must leave the European Union’s customs union — something that would require checks on goods passing between Britain and the EU.
In broad terms, the U.K. is proposing that Northern Ireland — but not the rest of the U.K. — continue to follow EU customs rules and tariffs after Brexit in order to remove the need for border checks.
But that would mean new checks or tariffs on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.
According to an EU official, Barnier said during a teleconference of some lawmakers that the Irish Sea would largely become the customs border between the EU and the U.K.
That would avoid having a visible land border on the island of Ireland between the two. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations were ongoing, said some complicated issues were still being fought over.
But Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, the pro-British Protestant party that props up Johnson’s minority government, strongly opposes any measures that could loosen the bonds between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.
Brexit supporters are also wary that maintaining any kind of customs union with the EU will tie the U.K. to the bloc’s regulations and limit its ability to strike new trade deals around the world — thus undermining what were supposed to be some of the key benefits of a withdrawal.