Brexit preparations have focused on citizens’ rights (see EUROPE 11786, 11782) and the UK’s financial settlement, but the EU’s third priority in the upcoming talks - borders - is turning out to be just as complex.
The European Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, travelled to Ireland this week, where he admitted there would have to be border checks if the UK leaves the customs union.
“The UK's departure from the EU will have consequences. We have a duty to speak the truth,” Mr Barnier told a joint sitting of the Irish parliament and senate on Thursday. “Customs controls are part of EU border management. They protect the single market. They protect our food safety and our standards.”
The problem is the lack of clarity over the UK’s position.
While British prime minister Theresa May has said clearly that she will take Britain out of the single market, she has been less clear about what to do about the customs union, which eliminates tariffs and other barriers to trade in goods.
And while she has said there should be no return to a “hard border”, both the EU and UK side want to exercise control over goods and people moving back and forth across their territory.
“There is a political responsibility on the British prime minister here,” said MEP Mairead McGuinness, who was at a bureau meeting of the centre-right European People’s Party in Ireland this week. “It was the British who had the referendum, and while we all respect that they voted to leave, we’re all the victims of that circumstance.”
At that meeting, former British prime minister Tony Blair told EPP group members that the return of a hard border would be a “disaster”. “If the UK and the Republic were able to agree a way forward on the border, then we would have the best chance of limiting the damage. It is in the interests of us all, including our European partners, for this to happen,” Mr Blair said.
But there is also the feeling that the UK doesn’t care about the effects of Brexit on the border region.
“Many of the concerns in Northern Ireland about a hard Brexit are not being articulated by UK and Northern Ireland politicians,” said Ms McGuinness.
There was more of a furore in the UK about the mention of Gibraltar in EU leaders' negotiating guidelines than about the reference to Irish reunification in the minutes of last month's EU summit (see EUROPE 11778) - aside from Ukip MEP Nigel Farage, who said on Twitter that the EU was “stoking Irish nationalism to make Brexit negotiations difficult”.
“A solution at the moment seems beyond imagining,” Ms McGuinness said, “but it has to be delivered.”
Border controls of any kind are an emotive issue on the island, where a heavily militarised border was only dismantled following the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.
An estimated 30,000 people a day cross the now invisible border between Ireland and Northern Ireland for work and study. Exports to the Republic of Ireland account for a fifth of Northern Ireland’s total exports. The UK as a whole accounts for around 14% of Ireland’s total exports.
Danny McCoy, the head of Ireland’s business and employers’ federation (Ibec), says a contingency plan will need to be put in place not only for people crossing the border “but also the massive trade exposure of key sectors and the potential impact on highly integrated cross-border supply chains”. He has called for EU state aid rules to be relaxed for exposed firms.
Many of these issues, however, will only be decided in the second phase of talks, when more is known about what kind of trade deal will emerge, and what transitional arrangements will be put in place post-Brexit.
Draft EU negotiating directives (paragraph 14) recognise the “unique circumstances” and “unique geographic situation” on the island of Ireland, including on the transit of goods (see EUROPE 11780).
Those directives, which are being discussed by EU ambassadors this week and next before being signed off by ministers on 22 May, talk about finding “flexible and imaginative solutions… to avoid the creation of a hard border” on the island (see other article).
The deal also mentions the fact that the Good Friday peace Agreement entitles Northern Ireland’s 1.8 million citizens to Irish citizenship (and therefore EU membership) if they want it, and mentions the need to maintain the Common Travel Area between the UK and Ireland, which dates back to the 1920s.
Mr Barnier insisted that “nothing in this negotiation should put peace at risk” and reassured the Irish people that “Ireland's interest will be the Union's interest” during the talks. “We are in this negotiation together and a united EU will be here for you,” he said.