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The European commission also refused to go into the secretive and intensive “tunnel” talks with the UK’s negotiators before a crunch summit on 17 October from which the UK had hoped to deliver a breakthrough deal.
Despite concerted attempts to avoid publicly trashing the UK proposals, there was dismay behind the scenes in Brussels after Johnson tabled his first concrete proposal for replacing the Irish backstop.
The prime minister had set out the outline of the government’s offer in a speech to Tory party faithful in Manchester that also laid down the battle lines for a general election. On Wednesday night, he was hopeful a parliamentary majority could be assembled to back it.
Johnson’s plan involves Northern Ireland leaving the EU’s customs union at the end of transition along with the rest of the UK, necessitating checks and controls on the island of Ireland.
Northern Ireland would also stay aligned with EU standards on goods if Stormont agreed by December 2020, the end of the transition period, and then in a vote every four years.
But the UK has also requested that both sides commit at treaty level “never to conduct checks at the border” even if Stormont vetoes the arrangements laid out in the new 44-page Irish protocol.
Barnier said that this commitment would prevent Brussels from protecting its internal market if the Northern Ireland assembly blocked the arrangement in 2020 or at a later date.
“The EU would then be trapped with no backstop to preserve the single market after Brexit,” he warned, according to someone present in the room.
The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, issued a sombre statement after a phone call on Wednesday afternoon with Johnson. Varadkar warned the prime minister that the legal texts tabled “do not fully meet the agreed objectives of the backstop”.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, told the prime minister in his phone call that there remained “problematic points”.
It is understood that the European parliament’s Brexit steering group will say on Thursday that MEPs will not vote in support of the deal proposed by the UK government. “The reaction of the Brexit steering group was not positive,” the group’s coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, told reporters after a briefing from Barnier. “Not positive in that we don’t think really there are the safeguards that Ireland needs.”In a letter to the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister said: “This government wants to get a deal, as I’m sure we all do. If we cannot reach one, it would represent a failure of statecraft for which we would all be responsible.”
[...]
The government’s five points include:
• Respecting the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.
• A commitment to longstanding areas of UK-Ireland collaboration.
• Creating an all-island regulatory zone on the island of Ireland, covering all goods including agri-food.
• Giving the Northern Ireland executive and assembly the opportunity to endorse the new regulatory arrangements before they enter into force.
• Northern Ireland will be fully part of the UK customs territory, not
the EU customs union, after the end of the transition period.
Johnson said the plan was a “fair and reasonable compromise”, and talked of a “broad landing zone, in which I believe a deal can begin to take shape”.
He added: “There is very little time … We need to get this done before the October European council.”
As he suggested in his Conservative party conference speech on Wednesday, the plan involves Northern Ireland leaving the customs union at the end of transition, together with the rest of the UK.
That would entail customs checks on the island of Ireland, which Johnson argues can be alleviated through alternative arrangements including electronic paperwork, and a “very small number” of physical checks, to take place at businesses’ premises.
While the initial response from the EU27 has been frosty, Johnson does appear to have won the support of the Democratic Unionist party, which has been closely involved in discussions about the plan in recent days. [...]
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