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"It's the best deal possible."
British Prime Minister Theresa May repeated this sentence a few weeks ago with the aim of persuading her country's parliament to approve the agreement negotiated with the European Union, laying down the terms of Brexit – the exit process from the UK. of the block.
But Monday, the Prime Minister indefinitely postponed the vote on the agreement to Parliament, recognizing that it would be rejected by the majority of British parliamentarians. On Wednesday, he again faced a vote of mistrust from his peers – he survived 200 votes in favor and 117 against, but promised to give up the leadership of the party before the next election and now remains in a weak position for convince to approve the conditions negotiated with the EU.
"Many aspects of the treaty are widely supported, but there is also opposition," said May, who once again met with European leaders to voice the concerns of British parliamentarians, particularly the parliamentarians. thorny problem of agreement: the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Here is why this became the most controversial point of the British exit of the European bloc:
1. The 1998 peace agreement, which ended three decades of bloody conflict between the Republic of Ireland (independent country and EU member) and Northern Ireland (part of of the United Kingdom)) considers the absence of physical barriers between the two parties.
Since this year, one can cross the border without going through any physical control. The sale of goods and services is subject to few restrictions as both parties are part of the European Common Market and the Customs Union.
But when the Brexit comes to fruition on March 29, 2019 and the UK ceases to be part of the EU, the border between the two will become, in practice, the physical border between the EU and the EU. and the United Kingdom. .
British Prime Minister Theresa May Speaks in Parliament Monday (17) – Photo: AFP
The Irish will be subject to different regimes, which implies that the products can be inspected at the border – which the British do not want, precisely because they fear that the checks of the currency do not highlight the old tensions between the Irish and the Northern Irish
desirable from the point of view of the EU, but the bloc sees difficulties in avoiding it as soon as the British have left the common market and the customs union.
On the political front, the Commiss North-South mixed ion of Ireland warned that any border control arising from Brexit indicates that it will be peace agreement of 1998 was broken.
2.
Although London and Brussels have agreed from the outset not to define a "hard" (or highly controlled) border in the Irish currency, the main obstacle is that the agreement between the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom 39 European Union on the Irish border was to define the terms for such.
The option was by a kind of "shield", called in English "backstop".
The mechanism provides that Northern Ireland remains in compliance with certain customs rules of the European Union to dispense with controls at the border with Ireland, but will require that certain products of the remainder United Kingdom are subject to controls to ensure compliance with EU standards.
The backstop will also involve a temporary customs union which, in practice, will keep the EU and the UK in a common market, at odds with the basic principle of Brexit.
This mechanism proved to be the main puzzle of the negotiations on Brexit, generating strong opposition to the agreement.
3. The idea is that the backstop only takes effect in the latter case, in case the EU and the United Kingdom could not quickly define the type of customs control, and bilateral trade relations after Brexit
The mechanism therefore provides that Northern Ireland remains subject to the regulation of the European single market if no bilateral solution is found by December 2020.
May defends the "backstop" by doing a good job r that it will only be put into practice as a last resort. Critics say, however, that its implementation would provoke a break in the territorial unit of the United Kingdom.
The Prime Minister was faced with hard opposition at this stage, particularly the Democratic Unionist Party, May's main ally in the British coalition government.
The Unionists reject the idea that Northern Ireland is under a different regime than the rest of the United Kingdom, fearing that this would involve a distancing of the country and an undesirable flirtation with the United Kingdom. a possible union between the two Irish.
Moreover, even conservative lawmakers believe that the support proposal is unworkable, by subjecting Northern Ireland to European (and not British) rules and fear that once the mechanism in force entered in force, may not be suspended without the approval of the EU.
From this point of view, "backstop" would mean that the United Kingdom would be in some way subject to the European will and could make it difficult to sign other trade agreements from which the United Kingdom could benefit.
Faced with strong opposition, l & # 39; eventuality of a rejection of the "backstop" implies the failure of the approval of the Brexit agreement between the EU and the UK. And the it is that, if this happens, there is no "Plan B".
In the absence of an agreement, the British parliamentarians will have to decide between:
All the alternatives imply difficulties and, possibly, a delay in the implementation of the Brexit – the disengagement of the Kingdom -Uni bloc – scheduled for 29 March 2019.
After surviving the vote of suspicion, May returned to Brussels to seek more legal guarantees for the security system, but without success.
The agreement "can not be renegotiated," Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, said on Friday.
He later called the "backstop" of an "insurance policy", adding that the European Union remained determined to seek alternatives to prevent its implementation.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar also said that the agreement on Brexit "is the only one on the table" and that "it is not possible to reopen an aspect of the agreement without reopening everything ".
If Parliament rejects the current proposal for examination, "it will not be agreed that the United Kingdom will leave its country or for a period of transition," said John Campbell, British editor for business and the economy in Northern Ireland.
"It means a difficult, even chaotic Brexit," he predicts. "If this happens, the EU and the Irish government will have to make tough decisions about what will happen at the border."
At the same time, the Court of Justice of the European Union added another possible facet to the game by deciding on Monday that the UK could unilaterally revoke Brexit at any time without unanimous agreement other Member States. of the block.
May, in turn, said that Parliament's voting time on this issue was 21 January 2019, depending on the state of play of negotiations with the EU.
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