Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
30 days given for backstop solution
GERMAN Chancellor Angela Me rke l h a s told P r i me Minister Boris Johnson he has 30 days to come up with an alternative solution to replace the Irish backstop.
Mr Johnson called her timetable “blistering”, but said he was “more than happy” with her proposal to speed up the talks.
The Conservative Party leader arrived in Berlin yesterday to kickstart talks to find an alternative to the Irish backstop – a contingency measure negotiated by his predecessor Theresa May to get an exit deal over the line.
Mr Johnson, in a letter this week to European Council President Donald Tusk, said Britain would leave without a deal unless the “antidemocratic” backstop – voted down three times by MPs in parliament – was removed from the Withdrawal Agreement.
The backstop was a stop-gap measure agreed by Mrs May in an attempt to prevent a hard border being reinstalled in Northern Ireland, a move that would have tied the UK to EU rules until a solution was found.
In a statement in the Chancellery, Mrs Merkel said the backstop had always been a “fallback position” and would only come into effect if no other solution could be agreed that would protect the “integrity of the single market”.
In an attempt to have a backstop solution in place before the October 31 Brexit deadline, the German leader said she wanted a new arrangement agreed within 30 days.
Mr Johnson said he was “more than happy” with the timetable proposed by his German counterpart.
“I must say I am very glad listening to you tonight Angela to hear that at least the conversations that matter can now properly begin,” he said.
A Downing Street source said the UK Government was happy with the tone of Mrs Merkel’s exchange.