LONDON (AP) — The European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator says if Britain withdraws without a deal with the EU, he still wants to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Michel Barnier said at a conference on Wednesday the EU will have to protect consumers and businesses with checks on British goods if Brexit takes place on March 29th without an agreement.
Barnier said: “We will still have to do checks and controls somewhere.” He didn’t specify where the inspections might happen.
He said it would be most challenging in the Republic of Ireland, an EU member country that shares a land border with the UK’s Northern Ireland.
Reintroducing a hard border there after a peace deal that ended decades of sectarian and nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland is a sensitive issue.
Barnier said: “We will have to find out an operational way to carrying out checks and controls without putting back in place a border.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she is working for a “well-ordered” Brexit as confusion reigns over how Britain is to leave the European Union on March 29.
Addressing delegates at the World Economic Forum, she said everyone involved in the EU is working out how to “deal with the shock of Brexit.”
Merkel said she is looking for a “good” future partnership, particularly with regard to security and defense issues in which Britain has taken a lead in the EU. And on issues of trade, she said it would be best if the future relationship between Britain and the EU is as frictionless as possible.
She said, “the easier the relationship, the easier for all of us.”
Last week, British Prime Minister Theresa May overwhelmingly lost a parliamentary vote on her Brexit deal with the EU. Since then, there’s been growing talk that Britain could crash out of the bloc without a deal or that it will end up extending its date of departure.