EU, UK consider ways around Irish border issue

Bloomberg

The European Union and the UK will seek to agree on broad principles on the Irish border dilemma in coming months to prevent the search for a solution holding up the wider Brexit talks, according to four officials familiar with the matter.
The principles will go a little further than the negotiating directives published by the EU in May, and could refer to the special circumstances facing Northern Ireland as a result of the UK’s decision to exit the bloc, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential talks.
Such an accord would avoid closing off options on the border issue, allowing it to be parked until later in the negotiations when the shape of a future trade deal between the two sides is clearer, the people said. That would be welcomed by May’s government, which is keen to turn the negotiations to trade as quickly as possible.
British Brexit Secretary David Davis said on Tuesday that a full plan for the border is unlikely “until the end of the process” of negotiating the split.

‘Sufficient Progress’
Keeping the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland open following the UK’s departure from the EU is one of three topics, along with citizens’ rights and money owed by the UK, that require “sufficient progress” on resolving before the EU will allow talks to move on to Britain’s future relationship with the bloc.
After the UK leaves the union, Ireland’s 310-mile border running from near Derry in the north to Dundalk in the south will form the EU’s land border with the UK. The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, is warning that customs controls may have to be reintroduced, and French farmers are already objecting to an open border because of concern cheaper non-European imports will enter the EU via the U.K. border.
“The cautious realism of the EU on this front is notable,” Katy Hayward, a lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, wrote in a blog for the London School of Economics. “A ‘hard’ border is a real possibility, and a ‘frictionless’ border is almost an oxymoron.”
Irish officials have spent months looking at technological solutions to minimize disruption along the border following Brexit. However, the new Irish administration, led by Leo Varadkar, is downplaying this effort, preferring to focus on its preferred option that no border of any sort should be reintroduced, according to the people.
That in part reflects a sense in Dublin that the outcome of the U.K. election makes it less likely that Ireland’s closest neighbor will exit the customs union, which will require customs controls to be reintroduced, one of the people said.
The British have yet
to advance any concrete
solutions about how to deal with the issue, one person said.