EU Nations Discuss Time Limit for Irish Backstop in Brexit Deal

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – This week had seen some hints that there might be a way to get a deal. Tory MPs who refused to vote for the agreement that May negotiated suggested they could be persuaded to back a deal to avoid losing Brexit altogether.

The Democratic Unionist Party — a key ally from Northern Ireland — has been publicly supportive of Johnson and his negotiating efforts. Johnson said at an event in Manchester alongside DUP figures late Tuesday that he hoped to clinch a deal in the next few days.

Meanwhile, it emerged that European governments have privately discussed allowing a time limit on the so-called Irish backstop — the most controversial part of the deal, according to two people familiar with the situation. But the time limit would only be on offer if Johnson puts forward a workable proposal, officials said. Johnson isn’t ruling out a time limit on the backstop.

With less than a month to go until Britain is due to leave the EU, everything still hangs on the question of the Irish border. Once the U.K. has left the EU’s customs union, there will need to be border controls, but both sides say they’re opposed to physical infrastructure such as checkpoints on the frontier.

Johnson has said he wants to abolish the backstop — designed as an insurance policy to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland — because it risks trapping the U.K. in EU rules indefinitely. In interviews this week he said customs checks of some kind would be needed on the island of Ireland as a consequence of the EU’s demands to protect its single market. The tone of his comments alarmed some in Brussels.

“There will have to be a system, for customs checks away from the border,” the prime minister said in an interview with the BBC. “That is where the argument is going to be. And that’s where the negotiation will be tough.”

Source: Bloomberg Business News