A “divorce” deal between Britain and the EU is very close, negotiators in Brussels said today amid signs that progress is being made to resolve the row over the Irish border.
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar raised hopes of a breakthrough, stressing: “There is a good opportunity to clinch a deal over the next couple of weeks.”
Theresa May’s chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins is said to have been in Brussels for most of the week as talks intensify ahead of an EU summit starting on October 17.
Ministers, and the Democratic Unionist Party which props up the Government, insist there can be no new border down the Irish Sea as part of a “backstop” if there is no future trade deal which avoids a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
However, the latest proposal from London appeared to include the whole of the UK temporarily staying within a customs arrangement with the EU in order to avoid a hard Irish border. EU Brexit negotiators told diplomats in Brussels late last night that a divorce deal was “very close”, according to two sources present at the latest talks.
“At the moment we’re in the eye of the hurricane,” said one diplomat involved in them. “Things are going to spin fast.”
Lord Ricketts, former head of the Foreign Office, tweeted: “Rumours of London moving towards a customs union applying to all of UK for a period are encouraging, and not surprisingly they are producing an echo from Brussels that a deal could be done quickly. This is the classic European negotiating model starting to work. Fingers crossed.”
But Dublin this morning pointedly warned that any deal must not threaten the “integrity” of the single market, raising the prospect that the UK, or the DUP, would have to give more ground in this area to get a deal.
Agreement now hinges on whether the EU and UK can convince Brexiteers, Northern Ireland unionists and hardline EU countries such as France to agree to keep the UK in the bloc’s customs union, while allowing Northern Ireland to align itself with certain EU product standards.
Meanwhile International Trade Secretary Liam Fox suggested it was “self-evident” that a Brexit deal could be renegotiated later on.
