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Backstop deal has no end date, Irish PM hints Irish PM welcomes Brexit deal and guarantee of no hard border
(about 7 hours later)
The withdrawal agreement between the UK and EU does not include Brexiter demands for an expiry date or an option for the UK to unilaterally exit the arrangement, the Irish prime minister has strongly hinted. Leo Varadkar has declared the Brexit deal a “pretty good” day in politics, revealing that Ireland had achieved everything it wanted from the negotiations including a guarantee over the Irish border.
After being briefed overnight on the detail of the withdrawal agreement, Leo Varadkar suggested Theresa May did not get the concessions she wanted. He did not go into detail, telling the Irish parliament he did not want to “upend” things for her before a crunch cabinet meeting but he promised opposition MPs in the Dáil that the backstop “can’t have an expiry date and it can’t be possible for anyone side to withdraw from it unilaterally”. The country secured a guarantee that there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland – with none of the conditions demanded by Brexiters attached.
Varadkar also confirmed that an emergency EU summit had been pencilled in for 25 November if Theresa May’s Brexit deal emerges unscathed from the cabinet meeting on Wednesday. The so-called “backstop” agreement will come into force in the event of no deal and will not have the expiry date or the unilateral exit clause that hard Brexiters had been demanding.
It was also revealed that he would brief the Northern Ireland non-unionist parties, the SDLP and the Alliance, on the withdrawal agreement, even though the region is part of the UK jurisdiction. At the same time he reached out to unionists, saying they would be protected by the deal. Varadkar, Ireland’s taoiseach, praised Theresa May for her “mettle and courage” but said he could not predict what would happen if she did not get support in parliament.
“I know for the unionist community in Northern Ireland this is quite a difficult time, many of them may be feeling vulnerable, many of them might be feeling isolated and many of them may be quite worried about what may be agreed in the coming days,” he told the Dáil. He said Ireland’s priorities from the outset had been “protecting the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement, protecting the common travel area and protecting trade, jobs and the economy … On each of these priorities we have achieved a satisfactory outcome today.”
“I want to say to them the GFA [Good Friday agreement] will be protected, and that includes a recognition of that we respect the territory of the United Kingdom and that we respect the principle of consent, that there can be no change to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland unless a majority of Northern Ireland say so and we are very happy to have that written into any agreement,” He added: “This is one of the better days in politics”, saying that his mood was “pretty good”.
Earlier, the senator Neale Richmond of the governing Fine Gael party said the government did not want to see any “hardening” of the border in the Irish Sea. He told RTE’s Morning Ireland there was no desire to humiliate the UK as the DUP’s Brexit spokesman, Sammy Wilson, has suggested after the Brexit leaks on Tuesday. As recently as Tuesday, former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said it would give Dublin a say in Northern Ireland for the first time since partition almost 100 years ago.
“The priority will always be that in the future declaration framework, that in the next transition period, we can negotiate that deep and meaningful trade customs and regulatory arrangement between the EU and the UK as a whole, that will ensure not only that there is no hard border on the island of Ireland but there is no hardening of the border down the Irish Sea. That’s something the government is keen to achieve and I think can achieve,” Richmond said. In the Irish parliament, Varadkar said earlier on Wednesday that the agreement had addressed his concerns over an expiry date and a get-out clause for the UK. “It is our intention that the backstop should never have to be invoked and if it is invoked it should be temporary,” he told MPs.
“There is no ambition to humiliate anyone. Whatever the deal will be, it won’t be a good deal, because there simply is no such thing as a good deal.” The backstop, the document says, provides for the “maintaining of full alignment with those rules of the Union’s internal market and the customs union”, something that is likely to inflame the Democratic Unionist party.
The former Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern told RTE the Brexit agreement was a good deal for Ireland but a “hard sell” for May. But he said the UK-wide customs arrangement, instead of a discrete backstop for the Irish border, was a victory for her because it was a “big concession” from the EU. Arlene Foster, the leader of the party that is propping up the government, was not shown a copy of the text before its publication and warned if Theresa May was to break her pledge that there would be no border down the Irish sea, there would be “consequences”.
Ireland has said Brexit is the most damaging event in its history, with the lucrative £56.5bn (€65bn) a year trade with the UK at risk if there are barriers in the form of tariffs or border checks. The working of the protocol shows that the EU and May faced down the critics but much attention will be focused on the word “temporarily” in the protocol on Ireland.
It has been widely reported that there is just one backstop to ensure the Irish border remains open in the withdrawal agreement. The backstop, which is envisaged as an insurance policy in the event of no deal, however, is deeply embedded within the terms of the transition period with a temporary UK-wide customs arrangement. Temporarily implies the backstop could be short-lived, but hypothetically leaves the duration open-ended.
The protocol also restates the commitment to border communities of the UK and the EU and says Brexit should “impact as little as possible on the everyday life of communities both in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Ireland also secured a deal for freight traffic transiting cargo from Ireland to the EU via the “landbridge” of the UK.
The withdrawal agreement affirms the “comment of the UK to facilitate” this traffic in either direction.
Earlier, Varadkar raised the hackles of Brexiters when he confirmed that an emergency EU summit had been pencilled in for 25 November, assuming May’s Brexit deal survived the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, which it did.
MP Steve Baker, who resigned over the Chequers deal tweeted that he was “disappointed” to learn it in this way.
It also emerged that Varadkar was going to brief the Northern Ireland non-unionist parties, the SDLP and the Alliance, and the Green party on the withdrawal agreement, even though the region is part of the UK jurisdiction.
During questions in the Dáil, he sought to allay the fears of unionists, saying they would be protected by the deal.
“I know for the unionist community in Northern Ireland this is quite a difficult time; many of them may be feeling vulnerable, many of them might be feeling isolated and many of them may be quite worried about what may be agreed in the coming days,” he said.
“I want to say to them the Good Friday agreement will be protected, and that includes a recognition that we respect the territory of the United Kingdom and that we respect the principle of consent, that there can be no change to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland unless a majority of Northern Ireland say so and we are very happy to have that written into any agreement,”
A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal.A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal.
As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government.As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government.
That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit.That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit.
“The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs.“The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs.
Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added.Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added.
There are expected to be specific provisions for Northern Ireland that involve closer regulatory alignment to the single market with a review mechanism. It is believed the date of the first review would be in July 2020.
This would enable the two sides to agree one of three things. The first would be the implementation of a new regime in January 2021, at the end of the transition period. This would be predicated on a final deal on the future trade and security relationship being complete or nearing completion by then, which many think is highly unlikely.
The second option would be to agree a short extension to the transition period to enable negotiations to continue. May has suggested an extension of just three months may be needed.
The third option would be the backstop in the event of no deal and no extension in the transition period. This would mean the UK remaining in the customs union until further notice with deeper provisions for Northern Ireland in relation to single market regulations.
Richmond repeatedly said it was important to project the discussion beyond the withdrawal agreement because the long-term “priority” for Ireland was a future relationship with the UK.
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