23 February 2017

Financial Times: ‘Virtual’ Ireland border seen as template for Brexit customs deal

The UK wants to create a “virtual” border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, as a template for a new customs deal with the EU after Brexit that makes trade as easy as possible.

Most lorries would cross the border without checks after online notification of imports and exports. Shipments that raised a red warning flag to customs officers would be checked at a lorry park some distance away, maintaining the impression of an open border.

“You could carry out inspections in a zone 10 miles either side of the border,” said one British government minister. Another said: “We must be able to do it in a more sophisticated way than having someone standing by a checkpoint with a red and white pole.”

Enda Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister, was in Brussels on Thursday to press the case for a Brexit deal that ensures the free flow of cross-border trade without the need for checks. Trade between Britain and the EU would be subject to customs declarations and physical inspection of goods in all of the Brexit scenarios mapped out by Theresa May, including “associate” membership of the EU’s customs union, which imposes a common external tariff on goods. Mr Kenny said the best outcome would be to have arrangements “as close to what we have at the moment”.

Under the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998, there are no border posts between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. The border “is invisible if you go to look for it”, Mr Kenny said.

One Irish official said: “If you had frontier posts and official customs controls on the border they would become bomb targets. Nationalists in the north would not tolerate it.” Michael Noonan, the Irish finance minister, said last week that the Dublin government’s position was “not to have the kind of border that would require customs officials”. Ireland’s exports to the UK are worth about £18bn a year and Britain views it as an invaluable ally in persuading Brussels and other EU countries to co-operate on a new system that makes trade as easy as possible.

British ministers believe that the “virtual border” they hope to create in Ireland — which relies on light-touch inspection — could become a template for UK trade with the rest of the EU. One EU official said that trucks could be inspected at discreet road stations away from the border, but there was no avoiding the fact that checks would have to happen. [...]

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