EU ready to amend Northern Ireland clause to break Brexit impasse (FT) – Updated

The Financial Times reports that the EU is offering to remove the most contentious phrase from its Brexit plans for Northern Ireland in a bid to break the deadlock in negotiations with London.

The report says that the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, is prepared to delete references to Northern Ireland staying within the bloc’s “customs territory”, a term that has raised hackles in London.

However, RTÉ News reports after seeing re-worked elements of the draft withdrawal agreement, the EU and the Irish Government still want the backstop to remain in place, applying solely to Northern Ireland, even if a separate UK-wide customs arrangement is thrashed out. (The Telegraph) 

The proposal from the EU would jar with the Prime Minister’s insistence that the Withdrawal Agreement contains a “legally-binding” and temporary UK-wide customs backstop, as well as her belief that it applying just to Northern Ireland is “unacceptable”.

The move was part of a package worked up in intense UK-EU negotiations ahead of a summit this month, which ultimately stalled over the Irish border.

While the softer language on customs may have made a deal easier to sell, it would not have changed the legal effect of the withdrawal treaty in Northern Ireland, according to several EU diplomats briefed on the issue. Theresa May has long insisted that “no British prime minister” could ever accept provisions that would divide the UK’s customs territory.

The EU’s revised backstop draft removes the bluntest language in the original proposal, but retains many of the accompanying legal obligations, meaning that the outcome is likely to remain the same.

Read more on the Financial Times