Barnier says EU duty is to protect Irish citizens and companies
EU responsibility for peace Where would the checks be?
AS TENSIONS flare up in London, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator has pledged that peace and stability on the island of Ireland are the ‘duty’ and ‘responsibility’ of the bloc.
Significantly, amid fears that Ireland faces an economic meltdown as a No-Deal Brexit now looks likely, Michel Barnier added that in ‘all circumstance, the EU will continue to protect the interests of its citizens and companies’.
He issued his brief statement on Twitter yesterday, after pointing out that Boris Johnson had repeated that Britain would leave the EU on October 31, with or without a deal.
As the fallout from the British prime minister’s move to suspend parliament continued to unfold, Government ministers here admitted that a crash-out Brexit was now looking more likely.
European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee declared: ‘Given the fact that we are nine weeks, to date, from the Brexit deadline and we still don’t have a deal, I think, of course, it is looking more likely.’
The Meath TD said the Government needed to ‘remain calm, and for us to remain consistent’.
‘Throughout all this and throughout all the change… we have been flexible, I think we have adapted, in as much as we can, throughout all of the negotiations, and there has always been give and take,’ she said.
‘But we cannot change any further, we cannot change and allow the legal guarantees that we have been given, or the commitments that we have been given, to essentially… be wiped clean and replaced with nothing,’ she said on RTÉ radio. She said the British government has not put forward any viable alternative to the backstop, and that the border is about ‘more than just trade’.
‘We are being asked to remove the backstop completely and to replace it with nothing,’ the junior minister added. ‘We have to remain consistent.’
The Government has previously conceded that, in the event of a No-Deal Brexit, there would be some checks on goods – such as live animals – but these would not happen on or near the border and they remain in discussions about this with the EU.
However, Fianna Fáil’s Lisa Chambers has already called on the Government to offer more ‘transparency’ around this.
She asked what the position of the European Commission was ‘in relation to the Government’s proposal to have customs checks away from the border, and where it believes these checks should be placed’.
Ms McEntee said yesterday: ‘This is something we are still working through with the Commission and we are not hiding anything from people.
‘We have been very clear from the beginning when we said our principal position has now moved from planning for a deal to planning for a No Deal.
‘However, when it comes to the border, it’s much more difficult because, obviously, we have to achieve an objective, how do we protect our place in the single market and how do we ensure there are no checks on the border? We are working through that with the Commission.’
Pressed on when that is likely, Ms McEntee said it would be in the coming weeks, adding: ‘We will be letting people know as soon as we know, and there are certain things we don’t know, and we have said that throughout all of this.’
Communications Minister Richard Bruton described the situation as ‘disheartening’, adding that the recent development ‘does make the risks greater, that’s undoubtedly the case’.
Business Minister Heather Humphreys, who is from the border area, told business people: ‘Prepare for the worst, while we continue to work to get the best possible outcome for this country’. She went on: ‘It has been very clear, we have been telling businesses to prepare for a hard Brexit for the worst possible scenario. In terms of checks on the border, of course we do not want checks on the border, we have said there will be no checks on the border.’
But she said that ‘there will have to be some checks’, and said that it would be possible for tariffs to be paid online – but there would have to be some checks on animals.
Mr Barnier said, in his Twitter statement on Ireland, that in ‘all circumstance, the EU will continue to protect the interests of its citizens and companies, as well as the conditions for peace and stability on the island of Ireland. It is our duty and our responsibility’.