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Michel Barnier said on Wednesday that the EU had refined its planned “backstop” solution for Ireland, identifying solutions that would avoid a hard customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Mr Barnier said that Brussels was sticking to the broad thrust of its backstop plan, which would see Northern Ireland stay in the EU single market and customs union even once the UK has left, but he stressed that the proposals did not pose any territorial or constitutional threat to the UK.
“The UK wants to leave, and will leave the single market and the customs union — this means that there must be checks on goods travelling between EU and UK, and those checks do not exist today”, Mr Barnier told a conference of business leaders in Brussels, adding that “the EU proposes to carry out these checks in the least intrusive way possible”. [...]
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