LONDON/BRUSSELS: The European Union on Tuesday rebuffed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s demand that it reopen the Brexit divorce deal, saying Britain had failed to propose any realistic alternative to an agreed insurance policy for the Irish border.
After more than three years of Brexit crisis, the United Kingdom is heading towards a showdown with the EU as Johnson has vowed to leave the bloc on October 31 without a deal unless it agrees to renegotiate the divorce terms.
In his opening bid to the EU ahead of meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Johnson wrote a four-page letter to European Council President Donald Tusk asking to axe the Irish border “backstop”.
Johnson proposed that the backstop — part of the Withdrawal Agreement that then-prime minister Theresa May agreed last year — be replaced with a “commitment” to implement alternative arrangements as part of a deal on the post-Brexit relationship.
Merkel, Europe’s most powerful leader, said the EU would consider “practical solutions” but that the Withdrawal Agreement, which contains the protocol on the Irish border “backstop”, did not need to be changed.
“It is a question of the declaration on future ties,” she said during a visit to Iceland. “And I think we will act in a very unified way’’.
Brussels was more direct.
“Those against the backstop and not proposing realistic alternatives in fact support re-establishing a border. Even if they do not admit it,” Tusk tweeted.
A note seen by Reuters setting out the agreed joint position of the 27 EU states staying on after Brexit said the EU regretted Johnson’s bid to scrap a “necessary, legally operative solution” in favour of a “commitment to try to find a solution”.
Britain’s pound, sensitive to the prospects of a no-deal departure, fell after Tusk’s comments to near three-year lows against the euro and the dollar, before recovering its losses after Merkel’s comments.
European diplomats expect little progress on Brexit until the British domestic landscape becomes clearer when parliament returns on September 3 — after which the opposition Labour Party has vowed to try to collapse Johnson’s government.
With British politics in such turmoil, it is still unclear how, when or indeed if the United Kingdom will leave the EU. Many expect an election within months.
— Reuters
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