With all the trouble May is in, she just doesn't need another headache. Mind, she may not be around long enough to see the UK through leaving the EU. The north of the island of Ireland, will have special status meaning no border and staying in the customs union and the single market, business as now. The clock is ticking.
Brexit
EU rejects Irish border proposals and says Brexit talks could still fail
Michel Barnier says the UK wants to cherry pick its terms, and that the EU response is: ‘No way’
Lisa O'Carroll and
Heather Stewart
Fri 20 Apr 2018 13.29 BST
EU chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier: ‘In terms of what has been agreed so far, it’s about 75%.’ Photograph: Martin Divisek/EPA
The EU’s chief negotiator has said there is still a “risk of failure” in the Brexit negotiations as Brussels again rejected the UK’s proposals to avoid a hard border in
Ireland.
Michel Barnier said on Friday that a quarter of the work needed to complete preparations for the UK to leave the the bloc next March remains to be done, as sources say little progress was made in three weeks of talks to break the deadlock on the vexed Irish question.
“In terms of what has been agreed so far, it’s about 75%,” Barnier told France 2 television.
Even if Britain and the EU were working towards a British exit from the EU taking place in March 2019, this may not happen if outstanding topics such as Ireland were unresolved, he said.
“There are always difficulties, and risks of a failure,” said Barnier. Some in Britain want “what the English call cherry picking”, he said, adding that the reply to that was: “No way.”
A No 10 spokesman said on Friday the UK did not recognise claims that its plans for the Irish border had been subjected to a “systematic and forensic annihilation” by EU officials at a meeting this week with Britain’s lead negotiator, Olly Robbins.
The Daily Telegraph quoted unnamed EU diplomatic sources as saying that the Brussels officials delivered “a detailed and forensic rebuttal”, making clear that “none of the UK customs options will work - none of them”.
Sources say reports that Barnier had suspended internal talks on the future EU-UK trade deal until the Irish issue is resolved were incorrect.
But government sources did express exasperation at what they regard as the intransigence of the EU27.
Mujtaba Rahman, of the political consultancy Eurasia group, said: “This is the first time in an official meeting the UK’s Mansion House proposals have been systematically shot down by the EU side.”
While talks will continue over the next three weeks to try to achieve a breakthrough, there are fears that the Irish border question could, once again, prove a roadblock in wider
Brexit negotiations when EU leaders meet again in June.
The EU27 negotiating team are frustrated that little has changed on the British side since last August, when they first rejected the government’s proposals.
Britain was proposing a new “streamlined customs partnership” that involved “regulatory equivalence” on both sides of the border, with the option for future “divergence” – something that the EU has rejected as unworkable.
Pro soft-Brexit Conservative MPs believe the government may be deliberately presenting proposals it knows will be knocked back by Brussels, to help the prime minister break the deadlock in Cabinet about how to proceed.
Backers of a customs union believe it is the only way of resolving the border issue; but it would also constrain the UK’s ability to strike distinct trade deals with non-EU countries.
The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, told the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday: “Without your ability to do things in a different way if you want, and your ability to do free trade deals, there is very little point in Brexit. I think Theresa totally gets that.”
With a debate and vote on the customs union in the House of Commons next week expected to reveal the level of support for it among MPs, some believe the prime minister could yet be forced into conceding on her red line on the issue.
There are concerns in particular around agriculture that unless there was “alignment” in regulations, standards of food and livestock cross the border could not be guaranteed to be up to the EU’s standards.
Efforts to find a wording agreeable to both sides to provide a “backstop” option in the event that the overall Brexit deal did not obviate a need for border checks in Ireland have also not produced a breakthrough".
