EU hopes UK-wide customs union will break deadlock while Leo stresses importance of backstop

It has emerged that the EU Brexit taskforce is to offer a UK-wide customs union to get around what has become the controversial issue of the backstop for the North.

The proposal would see a legal clause put into the main withdrawal agreement that would give a specific commitment to a UK-wide customs arrangement which would replace the Northern Ireland-only plan.

However, the new formal customs arrangement would have to be dealt with separately to the Withdrawal Agreement and negotiated as another treaty.

As reported in the Irish Examiner last Friday, the insertion of the clause was discussed by leaders during the EU Council meeting last week.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he has “every confidence” that the UK will honour the backstop agreement agreed in Brexit.

Mr Varadkar yesterday stressed that a backstop which “gives us an assurance that there’ll be no hard border on the island of Ireland no matter what happens” is a key requirement of any deal.

“That is something that the UK government has committed to in principle, committed to in writing and I’ve every confidence that the UK government will honour that commitment,” he said.

Mr Varadkar also defended using a newspaper article about the Troubles to show his fellow EU leaders what a return to a hard border could look like.

The concerns that I was raising about the possibility of any physical infrastructure on the border becoming a target have been raised before,” he said.

“The deputy chief constable [of the PSNI], for example, himself, when speaking before the House of Commons committee on this matter, also pointed out that any customs posts, a physical infrastructure, could become a target.”

Mr Varadkar added that he had raised a “reasonable concern” with his fellow EU leaders “to demonstrate to them that this is something that people are very concerned about on the island of Ireland, concerned enough that it can appear on the front pages of our papers”.

“A lot of the reason why I believe we have peace on our island is because of the European Union because, over a number of decades, the European Union through regulatory alignment swept away a lot of the differences between north and south and that created the environment in which we could have a Good Friday Agreement and I think any change to that environment is a risk for the future and we should be wise to that. I really hope I’m not proven right.”