The European Union threw its weight behind Ireland in Brexit negotiations on Friday as a looming parliamentary defeat for the Irish government threatened to disrupt Britain’s timetable for a deal with Brussels.
A standoff between Dublin and London over how much detail Britain must give on its plans to avoid a disruptive hard border in Northern Ireland after it leaves the EU could thwart Prime Minister Theresa May’s hopes of securing EU agreement next month to open talks on a post-Brexit free trade deal.
Arriving for a Brussels summit with leaders of ex-Soviet neighbours, May said she would press European Council President Donald Tusk to pledge to open the trade talks at the same time as she makes the improved divorce offer the EU wants.
But attention among EU negotiators has swung to Ireland and concerns that an election triggered by a confidence motion next week in Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s government could stop him signing off on any EU accord with London and so scramble a carefully choreographed three-week run-in to a deal.
“The Irish issue is very worrying. The chances of sufficient progress in December were only 50-50. Now maybe less,” an official handling Brexit talks from one of the other 27 EU states told Reuters on the sidelines of Friday’s summit.
The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier met Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who was standing in for Varadkar at the Brussels talks, and reassured him the other 26 EU member states stood behind Ireland’s demands that Britain must do more to explain how it will keep goods and people flowing freely across the new EU-UK land border that will divide the island.
“Strong solidarity with Ireland,” Barnier wrote on Twitter. “Irish issues are EU issues.”
Coveney tweeted back: “Thank u @MichelBarnier reaffirming EU solidarity with Ireland on #Brexit.”
