Insight
After Salzburg: How to salvage the Brexit negotiations by Sam Lowe and John Springford 24 September 2018
Although EU leaders delivered the coup de grace to Theresa May’s Chequers plan in Salzburg avoiding no deal is still possible, but it will require some tough choices on the Irish backstop. Theresa May’s Chequers plan, which lost her two leading Brexiter members of her Cabinet, is dead. At the European Council summit in Salzburg on September 20th, the EU’s heads of state and government said no to her proposal for a dual-tariff customs arrangement and participation in the single market for goods (but not services, and without the free movement of people). Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, had already said that the plan violated the EU’s principle that there should be no partial membership of the single market. He had also said that the EU would not accept the customs proposals, which would allow the UK to maintain frictionless trade with the EU, while still being able to sign free trade agreements with countries outside Europe. The risk of no deal has risen. Is there any way to salvage the Brexit negotiations? Despite the focus on the future relationship, the big obstacle standing in the way of UK’s orderly withdrawal from the EU remains the Irish backstop. Chequers, which proposed frictionless trade in goods between the UK and the EU, was intended to provide May with an argument that the Irish backstop would never need to be used. But it would not have removed the need for a backstop. The EU has proposed that, unless and until the future relationship obviates the need for physical infrastructure and associated checks at the Irish land-border, Northern Ireland should remain, effectively, in the EU’s customs union and single market for goods. The need for the backstop to be ‘all weather’ and able to act as an insurance policy against any future circumstance, including the UK walking away from the post-withdrawal negotiating table, leaves little scope for the EU to agree to substantive changes to it. While May has said that the Irish backstop proposal is unacceptable, the EU is working on the assumption that, when faced with the binary choice of no deal or signing on the dotted line, Britain’s government, and its parliament, will acquiesce. And they will, rightly, argue that preventing divergence between Northern Ireland and Great Britain via the future partnership is still preferable, and well within the UK’s gift, so long as it erases its red lines.
CER INSIGHT: After Salzburg: How to salvage the Brexit negotiations 24 September 2018
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