Bulletproof ? Now Leo casts doubt on soft border deal
AVOIDING a hard border through a new freeflowing trade agreement between Europe and the UK after Brexit will be ‘will be hard to achieve’, Leo Varadkar has admitted.
After a meeting with prime minister Theresa May at Stormont on Monday, the Taoiseach said the two leaders had decided to work together to ‘explore solutions’ to achieve that aim.
This, he said, was the priority under the joint blueprint agreed in December, which put forward three solutions for avoiding a hard border, the ‘last resort’ being an understanding that the UK would maintain full regulatory alignment with the Customs Union and Single Market if all other options fail.
But the EU will not be keen to facilitate the free trade option over fears that a successful Brexit would encourage other members to leave.
But it remains the preferred option of his Government, the Taoiseach said yesterday.
‘The preferred option of the British and Irish governments is to avoid a hard border through a new relationship between the EU and the United Kingdom, within the framework of the EU-UK agreement, which includes all of Ireland and in which we have a new arrangement which is as close as possible to the Customs Union and Single Market arrangement that exists now,’ he told the Dáil.
‘That will be hard to achieve but is absolutely our preferred outcome and is what we are currently working on.’
But Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has demanded a Dáil session in which the Taoiseach takes questions on what was agreed in the December report, saying it was far from the ‘bulletproof’ deal it was sold as at the time.
He added that the Opposition parties had been told the agreement was ‘legally fireproof’, even though it would not be put on a statutory footing until the withdrawal agreement is complete.
‘The bulletproof deal has since become a default deal that we do not want to get to. This is in the Taoiseach’s own words,’ Mr Martin said.
‘Michel Barnier [the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator] and [European] Commissioner [Phil] Hogan have put it very starkly that if the UK stays out of the Customs Union and outside the Single Market, there will be a border.
‘That is in sharp contrast to what we were led to believe before Christmas. Irrespective of whether it was overhyped or oversold before Christmas, there was a clear sense which was communicated to us by Government personnel that what was agreed before Christmas was legally fireproof. We need clarity on that and a specific session on the matter would be useful.’
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Taoiseach has said the Government is doing ‘all that it can’ in response to a stark Government-commissioned report which warns €18billion could be wiped off our economy in the worst-case Brexit scenario.
The study by Copenhagen Economics examined the impact to Ireland from Brexit under a number of potential outcomes. It found that the economy will grow by 7% less than projected by 2030 under a no-deal Brexit which sees the UK adopt World Trade Organisation rules.
Even under the best-case scenario, where the UK adopts EEA rules used by countries such as Norway and Iceland, Ireland’s economy would grow by 2.3% less by 2030 than it would if Britain remained in the EU.
‘Led to believe it was fireproof’