Following the Biarritz G7, contacts are continuing this week between European leaders and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to try to reach an agreement on the UK's exit from the EU by 31 October. After meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on the morning of Tuesday 27 August, the British leader was later to have a telephone conversation with Jean-Claude Juncker.
The two men have not spoken since July and the President of the European Commission could not travel to Biarritz. The telephone call is therefore part of this context, the Commission explained. According to British media reports, Boris Johnson was to urge President Juncker to reopen discussions on the withdrawal agreement.
On Wednesday 28, the British Brexit negotiator, David Frost, will also be in Brussels to meet the Article 50 team, with other meetings at other levels also being possible, said Mina Andreeva, the institution's spokeswoman, on 27 August.
The Commission, she recalled, remained ready to engage in a "constructive way on any concrete proposal compatible with the withdrawal agreement", a proposal that must, however, come from the United Kingdom. The spokeswoman reacted in particular to a note published on 27 August by Politico, in which academics Joseph H. H. Weiler, Daniel Sarmiento and Jonathan Faull - a British former European civil servant who chaired the first EU working group in 2015 to prepare for the British referendum on 23 June 2016 - put forward somewhat more concrete ideas for alternatives to the backstop for Ireland.
In particular, they suggest a system of sanctions if the United Kingdom were to diverge from European rules on products transiting through Northern Ireland to Ireland and the EU.
In their view, maintaining the integrity of the European single market and the British territory does not require Ireland to be treated differently from the rest of the EU or Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the United Kingdom, nor does it require the United Kingdom to remain in the Customs Union (an option that implies that the country will lose its independence in negotiating international free trade agreements and defining external customs tariffs).
The two blocs could thus retain their regulatory autonomy and could have different customs regimes, with an understanding that they would logically aim for the greatest convergence. However, if a product from Northern Ireland violating EU regulations were to find itself on the other side of the border, it would be an offence and a violation of British law punishable by severe fines and possibly criminal penalties.
It is also logical that Ireland, in this scenario, would also put in place a similar sanctions and penalties regime for this type of offence. Any violation of British rules by products moving from South to North of the Irish border would also be sanctioned under Irish law.
For possible disputes, the Court of Justice of the EU would be the final arbiter in each case concerning EU regulatory provisions; British courts would be the final arbiter for any violation of British rules.
Link to the proposal: https://bit.ly/32chg9T (Solenn Paulic)