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Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator, said that UK’s “backstop” proposal for avoiding controls at the Irish border “raises more questions than answers,” as he warned that Brussels would never accept an end-date being included in the plan.
The proposals published by the UK government yesterday would see Britain effectively agree to apply EU customs tariffs in order to avoid the need for checks at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The plans are a bid by Theresa May to replace the EU’s blueprint for the backstop arrangement, which would effectively leave Northern Ireland in the union’s customs union and single market, with the rest of the UK outside.
But Mr Barnier took aim at the wording in the UK paper – inserted to ease internal tensions in the British government – saying that Britain’s expectation is that the backstop plan is unlikely to be needed after 2021 because new permanent arrangements would be in place.
Mr Barnier said that the EU would never accept a temporary backstop, given that the point of the idea is to make sure that there will not be border controls even if other solutions cannot be found between Britain and Brussels.
“Backstop means the backstop,” he said.
“We have a lot of supplementary questions,” about the UK plans, he said, noting that the paper does not address the issue of how Britain would comply with EU single market rules – another core issue for avoiding border checks. Other unsolved questions include the legal logistics for keeping the UK in EU free-trade deals, he said.
Mr Barnier also warned that the EU would never agree to simply extend its backstop plan for Northern Ireland to the whole UK, saying what was “feasible” for a territory the size of Northern Ireland would not be feasible for the whole UK.
“There cannot be à la carte access to the single market,” he said, referring to how the EU backstop plan would involve regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the EU for certain sectors of the economy, adding that Brussels was still analysing the details of the UK plans.
“The UK has decided to leave the EU,” he said. “We respect this democratic decision, and implement it. The UK needs to accept the consequences.”
Asked about leaked comments from Boris Johnson that the Brexit talks could be approaching “a meltdown,” Mr Barnier said: “we are elaborating our position in taking honest and scrupulous account of the British red lines, those that Boris Johnson and his colleagues have expressed.”
“We respect the British red lines, we would like that the British respect them too.”
He also said that Brussels rejected attempts by some UK politicians to place the responsibility for difficulties in the Brexit talks onto the EU’s shoulders.
“We will not let ourselves be intimidated by this – by this form of blame game,” he said.
