Brexit negotiators have managed to make “sufficient progress” on the three priority divorce issues - citizens, money and Ireland - to move talks on to a transition phase, if not yet on to trade (but more on that later).
But what happens in phase one doesn’t necessarily stay in phase one, as the Irish border issue clearly illustrates.
Brexit watchers would be forgiven for being confused by the 15 paragraphs on Ireland that ended up forming part of the joint progress report signed off by both sides on Friday.
While pushing detailed decisions on the Irish border into a second phase of talks (which the UK wants), the text opens the door to a special status for Northern Ireland (an Irish government request) as long as that doesn’t lead to splits with the rest of the UK (a red line for Northern Irish unionists).
It’s a solution that is all things to all people; or an Irish solution to an Irish problem, as the old adage goes.
Lost in translation
The key language is in paragraphs 49 and 50 of the text: if further talks don’t guarantee an open border, the UK will commit to “full regulatory alignment” with EU single market rules in Northern Ireland, while ensuring “no new regulatory barriers develop” between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
The logical conclusion, which is shared by Irish and EU officials: the UK as a whole will end up aligning itself with EU customs and single market rules if it wants to trade freely with the bloc and avoid divisions on the island of Ireland or within the UK itself.
“What the UK has been saying so far about the future relations still entails a number of internal contradictions and does not seem entirely realistic to us,” said a senior EU official on condition of anonymity.
The preliminary deal - which has yet to be fleshed out - says the same rules should apply across the island of Ireland in at least the 12 areas covered by the 1998 Good Friday (or Belfast) peace agreement. They include agriculture, fisheries, energy, healthcare, environment and others.
But the deal goes further on regulatory alignment, noting that it should also protect the “all-island economy” - which could mean anything from taxes to competition law. And the deal is not clear who would be responsible for overseeing that regulatory alignment.
The detail will be worked out in a second phase of talks, under a “specific strand” on Ireland, the joint text said.
“Nobody should underestimate the difficulties we will face on this issue,” said lead EU negotiator Michel Barnier.
"Let us remember that the most difficult challenge is still ahead,” Mr Tusk warned. “We all know that breaking up is hard, but breaking up and building a new relation is much harder.”
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said the deal was “not the end, but it is the end of the beginning”.
Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party propping up the UK’s minority conservative government, has said “there are still matters there we would have liked to see clarified”.
Transition and trade
It leaves a lot of open questions for negotiators as they head into phase two of talks on transition and trade.
Draft transition guidelines from European Council president Donald Tusk - due to be signed off at an EU summit next week - are likely to rile ardent Brexiteers, who are still exerting pressure on British prime minister Theresa may to “take back control” from the EU.
The draft insists the UK remain a customs union and single market member for the duration of any transition period, obey EU court judgements, pay into the EU budget and allow the free movement of people.
All of that without having an EU commissioner, MEPs, judges at the European Court of Justice or any voting rights in EU meetings.
“We’ll be ready to discuss this but naturally we have our conditions,” Mr Tusk said.
Meanwhile, “exploratory” talks on trade will not begin until well into next year, Mr Tusk said, once the EU has more clarity on what the UK wants, and after EU leaders adopt a separate set of guidelines.
“So far we have heard a number of various ideas,” Mr Tusk said. “We need more clarity on how the UK sees our future relations after it has left the single market and customs union.”
But with the British cabinet not even able to discuss what it wants from a future trade deal, even Irish solutions might not be enough to solve that one.
See the joint report of the UK and EU negotiators: http://bit.ly/2iGFODe (Sarah Collins)