14 January 2019

Financial Times: EU letter seeks to reassure UK on Irish border backstop

The EU has promised British MPs that the use of a contentious backstop plan for Northern Ireland will be “as short as possible”, in an exchange of letters aimed at bolstering Prime Minister Theresa May ahead of a historic House of Commons vote on her Brexit deal.

The three-page letter from Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, and Donald Tusk, European Council president, includes no significant revisions or additions to the terms of Britain’s Brexit package.

But the two leaders stress that they expect any use of the Irish backstop, which many Brexiters say would “trap” the UK in a customs arrangement with the EU, would be “temporary” and replaced “as quickly as possible”.

While Mr Juncker and Mr Tusk’s assurances could help Mrs May remind MPs of the main elements of her deal, they fall short of UK requests to insert a new target date for both sides to make efforts to ensure that the backstop would only be used for a year, if it had to be triggered at all.

The letter came as Mrs May warned Eurosceptic MPs that rejecting the package risked “paralysis” in parliament and “no Brexit”. Mrs May said she believed parliament blocking Brexit was now a more likely outcome than the UK leaving without a deal.

“It’s now my judgment that a more likely outcome is a paralysis in parliament that risks no Brexit,” she said during a visit to Stoke-on-Trent, a heavily Leave-voting Midlands city. “There are some in Westminster who would wish to delay or even stop Brexit and who will use every device available to them to do so.” [...]

Mr Juncker and Mr Tusk stressed in their letter that they were “not in a position to agree to anything that changes or is inconsistent with the withdrawal agreement” — the 585-page treaty outlining the terms of Britain’s departure, including the backstop plan to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. [...]

Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)

Joint letter of President Tusk and President Juncker to Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

© Financial Times