The past two weeks of the Brexit cycle has once again seen Ireland at the centre of the Brexit debate following key publications and speeches from both the UK and the EU.
On Wednesday 28 February, the EU stirred debate with the publication of its draft Withdrawal Agreement. This 120-page text aims to provide a legal underpinning to what was agreed by both parties in last December’s Joint Report.
It is a draft text that will be discussed by the EU Council before it is sent formally to the UK for negotiation. The Agreement features six sections covering various aspects to do with the departure of the UK from the EU and the transition period. However, it is the Agreement’s Protocol on Ireland / Northern Ireland that has generated most debate.
This protocol addresses the commitments made by both the UK and the EU to ensure there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland post-Brexit. It sets out in legal terms how “Option C” would work should agreement fail to be reached on Options A (border avoided through comprehensive future trade model) and B (UK proposed technical solutions to avoid a border).
Brexiteers are up in arms at the prospect of Northern Ireland retaining full alignment with the rules of the EU’s Internal Market and the Customs Union which are integral to North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the Good Friday / Belfast Agreement.
However, despite the Prime Minister’s claims that ‘No UK prime minister could ever agree to it’ this was exactly what she agreed to when she signed off on Paragraph 49 of the Joint Report last December in order to reach the sufficient progress threshold that was needed to open the way to discussions on the future trade agreement. On that occasion, the UK also signed off on Paragraph 50, which stated that should Option C come into play, the UK would ensure that no barriers would emerge between Britain and Northern Ireland.
While the EU’s draft text does not address Paragraph 50 as the EU sees this as an internal UK commitment, the UK Government has also failed to address this commitment, instead criticising the Commission for ensuring that the UK would be held to the commitments made in December should no alternative solution be found – and this is the critical point.
Despite the fallout from the Protocol, its publication has led to increased focus on how to solve the border issue. The British Irish Chamber of Commerce agrees with both the UK and Irish Governments that the solution for the island of Ireland should be found through a comprehensive future framework for trade. Our How to Make Brexit Work for All: Big Principles for a Strong Brexit Partnership paper, published last November, puts forward a trade solution that would address the border conundrum.
The UK Government has yet to put forward a credible solution for the border issue. In the Prime Minister’s 2 March speech on the UK’s future Economic Partnership with the European Union, there was little new on how the UK Government expects to meet its commitments on the border with the Prime Minister referencing the Government’s previous papers on Customs and Ireland as containing the solution. These proposals have already been dismissed by the EU as unrealistic.
The EU Council’s Draft Guidelines for negotiating the future trade relationship between the UK and the EU, published on 7 March, also does little to address the border issue and would seem to plan for Option C coming into play unless the UK puts forward more concrete proposals on this issue.
And now on to the contentious issue of technical solutions, the “Option B” for addressing the border issue, which has become topical once again with the recent publication of the Smart Border 2.0 report.
Firstly, it should be clarified that this is not an “EU report” as some have alluded to but rather a report that was presented by its author to the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) for consideration.
Secondly, what is proposed in this report involves the erection of physical infrastructure such as cameras and gates – this is in direct contradiction to UK Government Policy. It also recommends manned posts at the busiest border crossings and fails to address how local traffic will be dealt with.
Furthermore, the technology proposed in this report is untested. This creates concern about the reality of such a system operating to the standards that will be required by the EU. The EU Committee of the House of Lords recently concluded in its examination of the issue that there is “little prospect that the technology required entirely to resolve the Irish border issue could become operational under the timetable for Brexit currently envisaged”.
Finally, the issue of regulatory and standards checks including animal welfare and sanitary and phytosanitary checks is not addressed. This is a key element of cross border trade with “food and live animals” accounting for a third of Northern Irish exports to the Republic in 2016. These checks need to take place at borders and will be mandatory if the North diverges on regulations. The failure to address this, shows why we need to look for alternative wide-ranging solutions such as a new customs arrangement between the UK and the EU to address this issue.
While the dial has moved on the realities of Brexit in some areas (UK acknowledgment of less access to the EU’s internal market and loss of Financial Passporting), the fallacy that the UK can trade independently with non-EU nations while having a frictionless border on the island of Ireland seems to remain within the UK Government.
With Brexit moving ever closer, it is incumbent on all of us who value facts over ideologies to talk openly and honestly about what deals are on offer for the UK as an independent trading nation. This is the last stumbling block to achieving what truly could be a close and ambitious trading relationship that would indeed become the “Option A” for the Ireland / Northern Ireland conundrum and with much greater benefits for all beyond this. A comprehensive new Customs Partnership is the best solution and the Chamber is working hard to bring this about.
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Notes:
- The post gives the views of its author, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics.
- Featured image credit: N3 at Whitegate Cross, by David Dixon, under a CC-BY-SA-2.0 licence
- When you leave a comment, you’re agreeing to our Comment Policy
Katie Daughen is Head of Brexit Policy at the British Irish Chamber of Commerce. She coordinates the Chamber’s activities in relation to Brexit and provides research and support to members on this evolving issue. Previously, Katie worked in the political section of the Ireland, UK & Americas Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In this role she worked on Government policy as it related to Northern Ireland, working across a broad range of high profile and sensitive matters including Brexit.
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Tell the truth, it was commissioned by the European Parliament and it is an “electronic gate” not a physical gate.
Clearly no system will satisfy the Irish because they are under the cosh from the EU.
I would remind you that both the Irish and the Danes vote down further EU integration but we’re financially beaten up by the EU, until they had another vote and produced the right answer!
It seems entirely inevitable that Britain will end up in a Customs Union, whether that’s “the customs union and single market (CUSM)” or “a bespoke customs union”. Yet no one seems to be trying to sell the benefits, other than that it solves the Northern Ireland problem, which in harsh reality most British people couldn’t give a monkeys about. Benefits:
1) Britain has gone on for years that the EU should only be about trade, exactly what the CUSM is about.
2) Membership of the CUSM would cost less than membership of the EU, without damaging the British economy, meaning unarguable extra money that can go to the NHS.
3) CUSM would not strictly make Britain a rule taker. I believe the EU would allow Britain to play a full role in fashioning the trade related rules, it would simply lose the power to vote and veto rules. If Britain wanted to veto, it would have to do this through diplomacy, with Ireland for instance, which in matters of trade is largely agreeable.
4) In the CUSM, Britain would be subject to the ECJ. While its true the ECJ has made a few odd decisions in the past, and really needs to look at itself, it’s been painted as utterly intolerable. At the end of the day, who cares.
5) Remaining in the CUSM means Britain would not be able to make its own trade deals. Yet the EU is making trade deals, with Canada and Japan in recent years. EU trade deals take a long time because trade deals take a long time, and it wants good trade deals. The argument that Britain wants to make quick bad trade deals is ridiculous.
6) Staying in the CUSM means Britain would retain 50-odd existing trade deals. In renegotiating these trade deals, partners would inevitably extort concessions out of Britain.
7) Immigration is a difficulty, but leaving the EU is not a panacea. The EU is unlikely to grant any significant concessions on Free Movement if Britain remains in CUSM, some but not many. Net immigration is currently the lowest it’s been for years, and might continue. At the end of the day I’ve no solution. Britain’s problems with immigration were not caused by the EU, but by mass immigration from the Indian Subcontinent and the West Indies in the 1940s and ’50s, and by Tony Blair’s cavalier attitude to the EU eastern enlargement in 2004. Leaving the EU now to solve immigration is not a panacea, it’s closing the stable door after the horse is bolted. There is no solution. The EU will make very few concessions on Free Movements in any conceivable deal. The only other option is to fall back onto TWO trading rules in mainland Britain and allow Northern Ireland to remain in CUSM, which have untold consequences from a breakup of the UK to an economic recession in the whole of Europe reminiscent to 2008 that Britain would be entirely blamed for..
A lot of common sense in that post John. Unfortunately the politicians have made red lines for themselves to make common sense impossible. A CUSM approach is the best solution for all of us, an opt out in acceptance of further EU expansion especially regarding new countries and free movement, a sensible policy on get a job, support yourself or return to county of oringin. None of this should be too hard to negotiate. Unless we can get a better Brexit deal we should just not do it, why make a deal that is worse than you already have.