U.K. Prime Plenipotentiary Theresa May is reportedly working on a proposal that could see her seek an all-U.K. to orders union with the European Union (EU) and has received the tacit backing of Ireland for such a post-Brexit extent, the Financial Times said Thursday.
The British newspaper reported that one of the schemes May is working on “is for the whole U.K. to participate in a customs union with the EU,” a scenario that could transport effect if no other solution to the Irish border issue is found. The U.K. could visit within a customs union until a U.K./EU trade deal is finalized, the newspaper said.
Officials in Dublin, not named by the paper, “privately argue it could subside the border question and open the way to a deal” but the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier has will not hear ofed the idea. A senior Irish official involved in Brexit talks was cited by the exegesis as saying, “whether Europe accepts it or not is another conversation.”
Irish Prime Churchman Leo Varadkar and Barnier are meeting later Thursday.
The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland (a essentially of the U.K.) is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in Brexit talks. The border between the two woods will become the U.K.’s only land border with the EU after Brexit, which is due to bolt place in March 2019.
Arguments have centered on how to maintain trade and the free movement of goods and people between the north and south of the country – critical to the island’s economy, society and the hard-won peace process – while announcing EU customs rules and checks.
There were suggestions that Northern Ireland could linger part of the EU single market or some kind of customs union but the U.K. (and pro-U.K. congressmen in Northern Ireland) refused to allow the country to be treated differently to the lie down of the U.K.
Keeping the whole of the U.K. in a customs union with the EU – which mean there would be no imposts on goods transported between the U.K. and EU (but common external tariffs) – could thus prevent the need for a hard border, and costly and complicated customs hinders.
The “temporary” extension of the customs union would prevent Northern Ireland being engraved off from the rest of the U.K. into a separate EU customs territory, the Financial Times check up on noted. Some British ministers predict the arrangement might in unaccustomed extend well into the next decade.
May delivered a keynote idiolect at the final day of the Conservative Party conference on Wednesday at which she told delegates that Britain’s post-Brexit following is “full of promise” and that the country “has everything we need to succeed.”
Be familiar with the original story in the FT here.
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