From The Evening Standard:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been warned that there can be no Brexit deal without the Irish backstop by one of Emmanuel Macron’s strongest allies. Former French EU minister Nathalie Loiseau sent the stark warning to Mr Johnson on Sunday morning, telling Sky News “we would not ratify the Withdrawal Agreement without a backstop”.
Ms Loiseau told Sky’s Sophie Ridge: “The way the UK wants to leave the EU, you have a choice – there is the Withdrawal Agreement which is on the table or there is no deal. Let me say this clearly, there is nothing in between. You have the British Parliament but we have the European Parliament and we would not ratify the Withdrawal Agreement without a backstop.”
Fair enough, that's what the EU wants; we don't and so we'll have to agree to disagree.
Asked what the EU would insist on before starting trade talks, she said: “There will not be – if there was to be a no-deal – any negotiation on the future relationship with the EU without having clarity for Ireland, without having clarity for due payments and without having clarity for protection of citizens.”
In other words, if we go for No Deal, then they want to impose the Withdrawal Agreement on us anyway, which we won't accept... and then what?
I guess there's only one way to find out.
Monday, 29 July 2019
With French like these, who needs enemies?
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4 comments:
Follow the money....
The intractable problem is how do you prevent unauthorised goods from crossing the Irish border once we are no longer in the customs union? If we want a different trade deal to the EU, there has to be a border. Even if we say we'll just not put a border up and not impose tariffs, it's just a matter of time before some special interest group gets tariffs imposed on something or other and a border will be required to enforce them. We'll also have to reduce tariffs to zero for all goods for all countries as per WTO most favoured nation rules unless we can miraculously agree a deal with the EU. A very good thing in my opinion but a non starter politically - too many lazy vested interests who don't want to compete
Mombers. I don't understand what you mean by this:- "The intractable problem is how do you prevent unauthorised goods from crossing the Irish border once we are no longer in the customs union?" Unauthorised by whom??
@Mombers
Crossing the border in which direction? The main problem will arise in the Republic as customers will have to pay the EU import tariffs or obtain the goods from continental Europe, which is a long haul.
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