17 October 2018

Financial Times: Barnier open to extending Brexit transition by one year to 2021

On the eve of a Brexit summit in Brussels, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator told ministers from the bloc’s 27 remaining member states that Brussels was ready to propose fresh ideas to reach a deal by next month.

Simon Coveney, Irish deputy premier, welcomed the proposal as “new thinking” from Mr Barnier that would “create more time” for Britain and the EU to negotiate the UK-wide customs arrangement that London wants.

“The prospect of extending that transition period was always something that was there in the background,” Mr Coveney told RTE, Ireland’s national broadcaster, on Wednesday.

“What Michel Barnier has said now is . . . ‘Let’s give more time if necessary to negotiating a future relationship that makes the backstop [to avoid a hard border in the island of Ireland] unnecessary and irrelevant’.”

The idea was to create fresh scope to develop an alternative to deploying the backstop, Mr Coveney added. “Really it’s about creating the time and space for that other solution to be found . . . Certainly this is something that has been discussed between the two negotiating teams over the last 10 days.”

The plan mooted by Mr Barnier, informally suggested to the UK in talks last week, involves including a one-year extension clause for the 21-month transition period, which ends in December 2020. This would grant more time to agree a new UK-EU trade relationship and avoid special arrangements for Northern Ireland.

Britain, however, objected to significant elements of the plan for Northern Ireland, in effect suspending talks until after a summit of EU leaders this week.

Speaking to ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, Mr Barnier privately outlined his vision for a “two tier” backstop that could be included in the withdrawal agreement to ensure an open border was always maintained between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

This would include both a backstop for Northern Ireland alone, keeping it within the EU customs union and single market for goods, and alternative references to a UK-wide customs union.

Any separate UK-EU customs arrangements would, however, have to take the form of a new treaty to be negotiated and agreed in full after Brexit. “The extension and two-tier backstop arrangement would only be offered if all other parts of the Withdrawal Agreement are reached,” said one official in the room. [...]

Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)

© Financial Times