Ireland gives Britain two weeks for border plan

Britain must submit written proposals on how it plans to keep a frictionless border on the island of Ireland after Brexit in the next two weeks or face an uncertain summer of talks, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney was quoted as saying yesterday.The border between British-ruled Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland will be Britain’s only land frontier with the EU after it leaves the bloc.While both sides say that they are committed to keeping the border open, finding a practical solution is still proving to be elusive.The EU and Dublin insist Britain’s withdrawal treaty must lock in a backstop arrangement guaranteeing that Northern Ireland will abide by EU regulations in case a future trade pact does not remove the need for border controls.London has signed up to this but disagrees with the EU’s means of achieving it.“In the next two weeks, we need to see written proposals. It needs to happen two weeks from the summit,” Coveney told the Irish Times newspaper, referring to a June summit of EU leaders that is supposed to mark significant progress on the issue.“If there is no progress on the backstop, we are in for an uncertain summer. At this point we need written proposals on the Irish backstop consistent with what was agreed. We await written proposals from the British side.”Under the EU proposal, if all other attempts to avoid a hard border fail, Northern Ireland would form a “common regulatory area” with the bloc, in effect keeping the British province in a customs union with the EU.Britain has rejected this as a threat to the constitutional integrity of the UK and on Friday a government official said that it is considering a proposal giving Northern Ireland joint UK and European Union status so it can trade freely with both.The idea would be to create a 10-mile (16km)-wide trade buffer zone along the border for local traders such as dairy farmers after the United Kingdom leaves the blocHowever that idea, which the official said may not be put to the EU as Britain is still debating its own preferred Brexit strategy, was dismissed by officials in Dublin, Brussels and by the pro-Brexit Northern Irish party that supports Britain’s minority government.“These convoluted arrangements only arise because of the government’s failure to make it clear to the EU that regardless of EU negotiators’ attempts to keep us in the Customs Union and the Single Market, we are leaving,” Democratic Unionist Party MP Sammy Wilson said in a statement.“Instead of moving from one set of half-cooked ideas to the other, it is now time for the government to put down its foot and make it clear to EU negotiators that the Prime Minister stands by her commitment that no deal is better than a bad deal.”Martina Anderson, a member of the European Parliament for Sinn Fein, the main Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland, said the proposal would not solve the border issues.“Once again this shows the lack of knowledge of border areas and the concerns they face,” Anderson said. “The creation of a buffer zone would merely move the problem away from the border and hide a hard border in a buffer zone.”The Irish Times reported that Coveney, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and other senior ministers including Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe have repeatedly told their British counterparts that concrete proposals are needed soon.