EU to UK: Irish peace not a bargain chip

Bloomberg

European Union officials warned Britain not to make peace in Ireland a bargaining chip in their bid for a post-Brexit UK-EU trade deal.
With talks on the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc scheduled to resume next week, officials in Brussels said they wanted Theresa May’s government to come up with more ideas to keep the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as invisible as possible. The UK needed to take responsibility for the impact Brexit would have on the island, according to the officials, who asked not to be named, citing policy.
The question of how to control trade and immigration across the UK’s 500-kilometre land border with Ireland after Brexit is shaping up to be one of the thorniest issues of the talks. While checks have largely melted away after a peace agreement in the 1990s following decades of violence, the Irish are worried that any new border infrastructure could become a target for attacks.
In a proposal presented earlier, the UK said it wanted to avoid any physical border or customs checks with Ireland as part of any Brexit deal with the EU, calling for more “flexibility and imagination” to devise arrangements on the island of Ireland that preserve free movement of people and goods across the border. The document alarmed EU diplomats and Brexit negotiators who interpreted it as partly implying that the UK could wash its hands of the border problem and leave the EU to deal with the fallout.
Speaking to reporters, EU officials said the UK’s paper on Ireland, while good on aspirations, is lacking workable solutions on how the North-South border in Ireland will work in the future. The officials said they were
concerned about Britain linking the preservation of the peace process to the country’s future trade deal with the EU.
A UK official responded that they were puzzled by the comments from Brussels. They said Britain’s paper on Northern Ireland made the position clear, and that the comments from the commission suggested that the EU didn’t appreciate the sensitivities around Northern Ireland. They added the negotiations weren’t a game with bargaining chips.
Ireland is one of three issues in which there needs to be “sufficient progress” by October for EU leaders to authorise the start of post-Brexit trade discussions.

Merkel warns UK it’ll have to pay EU obligations in Brexit

Bloomberg

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned the UK that it must pay what it owes the European Union as part of Brexit talks, saying it’s misleading to view the costs as a divorce bill.
“This is about obligations that Great Britain has entered into and that naturally must remain on the books,” Merkel said in her weekly podcast published Saturday.
“It’s not about the cost of divorce—that makes it sound like fines. We’re still at the very start of these negotiations.”
Talks on the UK’s exit from the EU are to resume on Monday in Brussels with little clarity on key topics, including the amount of the financial settlement that’s an early part of the discussions. With PM May’s government silent on how much it’ll pay the EU, Merkel said the two are facing a “very difficult issue.” Separately from any Brexit deals, the EU’s next budget talks will “surely be very difficult” because the 28-nation bloc is losing a net contributor, Merkel said.