Just what are they playing at ?

[sinkov]

Barnier and his EU chums. According to them and the Remoanians in the UK, including our estimable poster 59/60, the Irish border is an intractable problem, insoluble unless we remain in the Customs Union, which Mrs May says we won't, and bound to de-rail the whole Brexit process.

But there is a solution out there, not proposed by our useless negotiating team, not from Nigel Farage, Boris or UKIP, but from the EU themselves. Here it is, I wonder why Barnier ignores it, or pretends it doesn't exist ?

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegDat...)596828_EN.pdf

Just in case you can't be bothered to go into the detail of this lengthy EU report on the Irish Border, here's their summary of their findings.

"In summary:

The first answer to the research question is: There will be a need of a Customs and Border solution post-Brexit on 29 March 2019 at 23.00, regardless of political solution and Brexit negotiation results. It will have severe consequences if such a Customs and Border solution is not designed, developed and implemented to facilitate the movement of people and trade.

The second answer to the research question is: It is possible to implement a Customs and Border solution that meets the requirements of the EU Customs legislation (Union Customs Code) and procedures, with expected post-Brexit volumes of cross-border people and goods, if using a combination of international standards, global best practices and state-of-the-art technology upgraded to a Smart Border 2.0 or similar solution".

[1959_60]

Well, I heard a spokesman for the Irish Government say that this was unworkable recently.

And, like you say, I haven't heard our Government comment on it at all.

In fact, when this issue HAD to be resolved in December (after this article was published) this option was not even discussed. Well, if it was it was never mentioned.
Instead they came up with a plan which was essentially the same as staying in the customs union. I was quite happy with this, even though it begged the question, why leave the custom union in the first place?
The logical result of this was that the whole of the UK would be subject to the same decision - it couldn't work otherwise.

Last week Theresa May announced that staying in the customs union, or being similarly aligned, was not going to happen.

So guess what? The whole Irish border issue is having to be revisited.

To coin a phrase, "You couldn't make it up"

[sinkov]

Spokespersons for the Irish government clear every pronouncement with their EU masters, they say no more and no less than their EU masters want them to say.

Odd though isn't it, one part of the EU comes up with a workable solution, other parts of the EU either ignore it or dismiss it. It's almost as though they prefer to have the problem, and aren't interested in solutions.

But of course that couldn't possibly be the case could it.

[1959_60]

I don't pretend that I know enough about the subject, but the "Smart" solution doesn't seem to have the support of the UK or Irish Governments.

It appears that the only workable solution (that will satisfy the DUP) is for there to be a customs union type thing - but this must be replicated with the rest of the EU...which Theresa May has ruled out.

If there was another option SOMEONE would have thought of it by now?

[sinkov]

The EU has thought of of it, it's there in their own report, I'm assuming the EU must know what will work on their own borders, or is that not the case ? I'm not aware that we have put any proposals forward yet, our set of useful idiots can't agree on how to proceed, the only position I've read about regarding the border is that they think it will resolve itself once a trade deal is agreed.

It really is a sad indictment of the political class, this border issue could be easily resolved if there was the political will, but there isn't. The EU and Eire sees the opportunity to thwart Brexit and keep us in the Customs Union, SinnFein sees an opportunity to make further progress towards a united Ireland, and so they all wring their hands about this so-called impossible situation.

The European Parliament has come up with a workable solution, similar systems work elsewhere, I'll bet whoever was responsible for that got their backsides kicked by Barnier, whatever were they thinking of, the EU and Remoanians do not want solutions , they want problems.

[sinkov]

Headline in the Independent last October.

"Britain's 'naive' plan for open Northern Ireland customs border ruled out by Ireland's customs authority"

But we haven't published a plan, naive or otherwise, as the Remoanians are so fond of pointing out, no one knows just what the government wants, and neither it seems does the government. The link I put up earlier refers to an EU plan, but no criticism of that by the Irish, it's just ignored. So why the lies and disinformation, as I asked before, just what are they playing at ?

[oldcolner]

I dont know what they are doing though the fact that 12 EU states revolted against Barniers Transition proposals suggests his wings have been clipped. The EU Barnier plan seems to be to damage our economy by uncertainty and drive everything to a cliff edge by October in the hope we capitulate because no solutions have been agreed, or to make us concede everything in desperation, or from the the UK for hardliners to walk away from the talks or hope the EU states demand Barnier to make an agreement more in our favour.
It’s certainly high stakes not helped by lots of fluff and bluster from our side and dogmatic diktats from Barnier And all this is damaging our economy.
The EU do drive things they don’t like to the wire.

[Supersub6]

It is 27 against 1 -----who holds the bargaining power? It isn't rocket science, particularly, when we went into this without any preparation in the first place and the various political parties in this country are still trying to make their own political points without progressing our exit from Europe. Never mind, only just over a year to go

[oldcolner]

It is 27 against 1 -----who holds the bargaining power? It isn't rocket science, particularly, when we went into this without any preparation in the first place and the various political parties in this country are still trying to make their own political points without progressing our exit from Europe. Never mind, only just over a year to go

It’s really only 8 months to go as the end of October should finalise the deal that has then to be ratified by the Governments of each of the 27 countries and that will take up to four months.

Guardian says
Mr Barnier has said he wants the terms of Britain’s EU exit agreed by Autumn 2018, having previously indicated he would like to have an exit deal agreed within 18 months of Article 50 being triggered, or by October 2018.

It is hoped all this will be concluded by Christmas, by which point Britain is expected to be in the final stages of its withdrawal from the EU and ready to formally leave the bloc on March 29, 2019.

[1959_60]

I'm scratching my head over what point you are trying to make here.

The EU published their ideas about how the Irish border issue could be resolved.

The Irish Government explained why, in their view, it couldn't work.

The British Government have not even commented on it (to my knowledge)

Instead, they went down another route (a border in the Irish Sea) and announced at the 11th hour that they had an agreement. Before it was signed, the DUP rejected it.
Then, at the 11.5th hour, an agreement was reached which essentially was the same as staying in the single market.

That was it.

Until last week when Theresa May (after arm twisting from the hard Brexiteers) announced that we would not stay in the single market, or any similar mechanism.

So....the Irish border issue re-emerged with a vengeance.

The EU tried to sort it out, the plan was rejected, and we are not suggesting a plan to sort it out.

100% the fault of our flip-flopping Government, and not having the first idea how to sort it out.

Watch next weeks exciting instalment.