The Scottish Parliament’s SPICe update on Brexit, from its Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations Committee is now out.
SPICe writes:
Following the October European Council, the Prime Minister made a statement on 22 October to update the UK Parliament. On the Withdrawal Agreement, the PM stated that the only barrier to agreement is finding an acceptable solution to the avoidance of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
She said:’95% of the withdrawal agreement and its protocols are now settled. There is one real sticking point left, but a considerable one, which is how we guarantee that, in the unlikely event that our future relationship is not in place by the end of the implementation period, there is no return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland’.
The PM then outlined ‘four steps’ to make the proposals on the table aimed at avoiding a hard border acceptable to the UK Government.
‘First, we must make the commitment to a temporary UK-EU joint customs territory legally binding so that the Northern Ireland-only proposal is no longer needed. This would protect relations not only north-south but, vitally, east-west…. The second step is to create an option to extend the implementation period as an alternative to the backstop… What I am saying is that if, at the end of 2020, our future relationship is not quite ready, the proposal is that the UK would be able to make a sovereign choice between the UK-wide customs backstop or a short extension of the implementation period… The third step is to ensure that, were we to need either of these insurance policies, whether the backstop or a short extension to the implementation period, we could not be kept in either arrangement indefinitely. We would not accept a position in which the UK, having negotiated in good faith an agreement that prevents a hard border in Northern Ireland, none the less finds itself locked into an alternative inferior arrangement against its will.
The fourth step is for the Government to deliver the commitments we have made to ensure full continued access for Northern Ireland’s businesses to the whole of the UK internal market. Northern Ireland’s businesses rely heavily on trade with their largest market, Great Britain, and we must protect this in any scenario. The EU has previously rejected the UK Government’s proposal for a UK-EU joint customs territory but appears to be willing to continue negotiations to find an acceptable ‘bridging’ solution in the event that the future partnership is not finalised by the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020.
One potential ‘bridge’ is an extension of the transition period as referred to in the second step of the PM’s statement. Joe Owen writing for the Institute for Government blog compares the time taken to conclude recent free trade negotiations (see chart below) and believes that ‘21 months is very unlikely to be enough to negotiate the kind of Brexit the UK is pursuing’.
