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There had never really been any doubt in Brussels about the February EU proposal to keep Northern Ireland in the single market and in the customs union after Brexit "would have a crash".
In the days leading up to the publication of the legal text, EU Deputy Chief Negotiator Sabine Weyand gave guidance to Olly Robbins, Senior Advisor of Downing Street for Brexit, on the direction taken by block to avoid a border too hard. island of Ireland. But the document was not shared with Downing Street. "There was no controlled landing on the British side," said an EU diplomat.
The impact was not disappointed. The proposal "would undermine the British common market and threaten the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom," the Prime Minister told the House of Commons. The Democratic Unionist Party has accused the EU of wanting to "annex" the province.
The aftershocks of this moment have left the Brexit negotiations unevenly since, and even now, in the final stretch, it is not clear whether a compromise on this thorny issue will emerge to allow things to stumble. .
Negotiators will officially come back this week in what Brussels calls "the tunnel", a period of private talks during which neither party should inform third parties of the situation. "Once something is out, it melts like a snowflake," said an Irish official.
The UK government wants to make enough progress in the coming days to allow Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, to convene an extraordinary summit of leaders around Brexit this month, to give the British Prime Minister a boost and to conclude a deal safely by December. This would give Parliament the necessary time to ratify the opt-out agreement containing the GBP 39 billion draft law on divorce, as well as provisions on citizens' rights and the solution to avoid a hard border. on the island of Ireland.
A joint EU-UK policy statement will accompany it, providing a framework for future trade negotiations. Discussions are underway to find the right language for May to assert that she protects the UK economy from trade barriers. But everyone knows there is only one problem.
The issue of the Irish border – or Gordian knot as described by Tusk – that defined the Brexit negotiations was not glowing on the Brussels scoreboard immediately after June 23, 2016.
After the summer holidays of this year, as the EU began to gather the constituents of its negotiating team, an internal "decision tree" had been developed at the Berlaymont, seat of the Commission. Brussels.
It was noted that a UK decision on the customs union with the bloc would have a decisive influence on the negotiations. But it was only in October, at this Conservative party conference, that Theresa May, under the guidance of Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, who were then the two chiefs of staff, told the faithful that it was taking the United Kingdom out of the single market. and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, that senior EU officials have understood that they have "a border problem".
The first EU negotiating position was taken in April 2017, when Article 50 was implemented in May. To avoid a rigid border, it would require "flexible and imaginative solutions," he said. The talks on this issue focused on technological solutions outside the border.
But Enda Kenny, then a member of the school board, became nervous. EU officials have begun to inform journalists about "magic thinking" from London.
In the autumn of that year, the Irish were pushing for what was for the first time described as a "relief" solution if the technological solution did not appear. A discussion paper was circulated to EU Member States in October, and it was clear that trusted trading systems and clever ways of minimizing regulatory control solutions would not work. "We have a major problem," the British official told colleagues.
Downing Street was feeling tremendous pressure to make progress last December, as the EU refused to talk about future trade relations until issues of opening withdrawal were resolved. It is in this context that a joint EU-UK report was approved, in which the UK Government committed itself to specific support for Northern Ireland, while insisting, following pressure from DUP leader Arlene Foster on a clause stating that there could be no border. in the sea of Ireland. EU officials at the time described it as "a huge fudge". "How on earth will this ever be written into a legal text?" Asked a senior official involved in the discussions.
In London, the chiefs of staff, David Davis, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, expressed their concerns, but May's chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, assured them successfully that these commitments had no meaning. .
"I do not know what that means, but the officials tell me that everything is fine," said Robbie Gibb, director of communications for Downing Street.
A backstop is needed to ensure that there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade agreement can not be signed until the end of 2020. Theresa May proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK remains in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels said that it needed more time to evaluate the proposal.
As a result, the EU insists on having its own support – the backing of a backing – which would mean that Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and in the future. In the absence of a free trade agreement, this would raise strong objections from conservative Conservatives, the Brexiters, the DUP, which supports its government.
This prompted May to propose a nationwide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit.
"The EU still needs a backstop to backstop, which is an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want it to be the only solution proposed by Northern Ireland, "May told the MPs.
Addressing the stakes, the prime minister said that the EU's insistence posed a threat to the UK's constitution: "We have made it clear that we can not accept anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom, "she added.
It was not good, but both sides developed their thinking during the last round of tunnel negotiations. The British government has called for the establishment of a customs union throughout the United Kingdom to replace the specific support of Northern Ireland. The committee accepted the possibility of including the reference to such a customs union, with a separate treaty specifying the details.
But they insisted that this would not imply the need for a specific text for Northern Ireland to cover if negotiations on such a customs union subsequently failed or if the United Kingdom decided not to not conclude the agreement.
EU officials do not rule out the possibility that the commission accepts that a customs union covering the entire United Kingdom replaces the specific unit in Northern Ireland, to except for "deeper" clauses specific to the province. But this jump would require Downing Street to recognize that the customs union is indeed permanent, which is unlikely to fly at home. It's the brothel. But a French government official talking for many in Brussels summed up the situation: "It's a British mess and they have to fix it."
