The European Commission’s messaging about the Irish border is both illogical and contradictory

The European Commission’s messaging about the Irish border is both illogical and contradictory

I read the news with increasing incredulity. After Michel Barnier’s spokesman told us that in the event of no deal there would have to be a hard border (How? 275 manned border posts? Expecting people to accept the blocking off of all but a few crossing points?), Barnier himself was forced to admit: “We will have to find an operational way of carrying out checks and controls without putting back in place a border”.

Later, speaking at an event in Brussels, Barnier’s deputy, Sabine Weyand, said that other options for the Irish border had been extensively discussed, the EU side were agreed that a time-limit to the Irish backstop defeated the purpose of having one and that “there is a very high risk of a crash-out, not by design, but by accident…”

So Barnier and Weyland have acknowledged that the EU’s insistence on including in the Withdrawal Agreement a temporary backstop – that will only be lifted by entering into a permanent trade agreement on the same terms because soft border controls will never be acceptable – will have the consequence that the Agreement will be rejected, leading to soft border controls being applied immediately.

The only possible explanation for such blatant perversion of logic is that the EU (Germany, France, the European Commission) are not interested in pragmatism, fairness or negotiation to mutual advantage but only in the exercise of power (‘winning’) – whether it be over the UK or over its own member states such as Greece, Hungary and Italy – regardless of the adverse consequences to their populace.

Weyand has kindly explained her justification for insisting on the temporary backstop (and presumably similar terms of any trade deal that will supersede it): “We looked at every border on this earth, and every border the EU has with a third country – there’s simply no way you can do away with checks and controls,” she said (referring presumably to a hard border since checks and controls of some kind are, of course, essential).

This, then, is the EU’s irrefutable justification for saying that soft border controls are impossible: anything that has not been done before is, by definition, impossible. It is precisely this stifling, rigid, rule-driven madness and resistance to innovation that we must escape in order to be able to prosper on the world stage.

Meanwhile, we have to listen to the ludicrous predictions of Armageddon that will arise from “no deal” (i.e. leaving without the Withdrawal Agreement and transition period) Most famously recently we’ve had the Border Force’s prediction of an 87% fall in throughput through Calais (which even the Border Force described as the ‘reasonable worst case’). It’s impossible for us to know how they have arrived at that bizarre conclusion because no-one has seen their report. The story emanates from Sky News which stated that they hadn’t seen any leaked Border Force report but only “a slide from an internal government presentation marked ‘Official-Sensitive’ and titled ‘Freight Traffic Contingency Assumptions’” which purported to be “a recent internal assessment much of which was omitted from public no-deal documentation”.

It is upon that prediction, of an 87% fall in throughput through Calais, that the chief executives of Sainsbury’s, Asda, M&S, Co-Op, Lidl, McDonald’s, KFC and others have based their dire warnings of severe food shortages and higher prices; and now we have Imperial College predicting an additional 12,000 deaths in Britain caused by increases in the cost of fruit and vegetables leading to people being unable to afford to eat enough of them. Quite why the costs of such foods should increase so substantially when we move outside the trade barrier wall erected to protect French farmers isn’t mentioned, let alone explained.

UK food exports to the EU will be damaged by the imposition of the Common External Tariff that the EU imposes on all third counties. Reuters reports that France is hiring an additional 700 customs staff to be ready to deal with imports from the UK in event of a no-deal Brexit because “merchandise coming from Britain could face up to four separate customs procedures under a post-Brexit regime against only one currently. That could translate into an extra two minutes per truck going through border controls, which could potentially lead to long queues gridlock in ports,” according to French minister Gerald Darmanin. However, it’s puzzling to me as to why extra procedures will be required since all EU regulations are to be incorporated into UK law on exit, so nothing will have changed in terms of standards when we leave. And any departures from those standards (probably not imminent) will not be clandestine but by well publicised statute or statutory instrument.

Whether or not UK food exports will be hit by extra customs controls as well as tariffs, there’s an apparently obvious solution in that, if there’s a reduction in the flow of food from EU farmers supported by our CAP contributions, there’ll be more space on our shelves for us to buy and consume home produce. True, that will not be sufficient to help us as consumers because, as the British Retail Consortium tells us, “in March, the situation becomes more acute as UK produce is out of season [so] at that time of year, 90% of lettuces, 80% of tomatoes and 70% of soft fruit sold in the UK is grown in the EU”.

Of course, the potential starvation and deaths to which the food retailers and Imperial College refer relates not to the processing by Calais of imports into the EU from the UK, as discussed above, but to the processing through Calais of EU food exports to the UK and I’m puzzled as to why French customs are interested in produce leaving France and what they might need to do differently post-Brexit. In any event, it would be very surprising indeed if the EU didn’t do its utmost to ensure the continued smooth delivery of agricultural produce to its biggest customer. Where does all this nonsense come from?

But back to the Irish border, and Sabine Weyand’s description of the EU’s stance – captured on film here – is of great assistance and significance. She makes statements that, on the face of it, don’t seem to be capable of being reconciled.

On the one hand she says [at 11:44] that “there are ways out by alternative arrangements” but then a few seconds later [at 12:00] says, referring to the Brady amendment, that “they don’t exist”.

She says [at 10:15] that “technological solutions are not enough to do away with the border” but [at 12:30] opines that during the transition period they will discuss “what additional facilitative measures will be needed on the Irish border in order to do away with a hard border”.

It seems to me that all Theresa May has to do in her negotiations is to draw attention to that last statement and emphasise that that is all that we are asking for – namely that there is no need for the backstop because it is agreed that the border will be policed by soft border controls using such facilitative measures as are deemed necessary.

The Irish say the backstop is essential because they think that, without it, there will need to be a hard border. But there doesn’t need to be – as Michel Barnier has now admitted.

What are the EU afraid of? Soft border controls are in use now at the Irish border – a combination of administrative cooperation, whistle-blowing, auditing and site raids by customs, tax and regulatory enforcement officials, all supplemented by occasional random spot-checks on roads leading up to and cameras at the border.

The thoroughness of such controls is a matter of degree. No border is fool-proof as only a very small proportion of cross-border consignments is ever physically checked, even at hard borders. By the end of the transition period, the Irish border could be controlled by the system of checks by then developed and, if either party considers that more robust controls are required, the nature and timing of such further improvements could be settled by agreement or arbitration. A no-deal scenario would remove that head start, but the same evolution process would apply.

It is only the nature of the goods and produce crossing that border that can be of relevance. Other aspects of the Free Trade Agreement, such as access to fisheries, have no relevance whatsoever to agreeing appropriate controls on movements across for the Irish border.

Currently the UK is in full alignment with EU standards. Any future divergence will require monitoring. If, say, chlorine-washed chicken is permitted in the UK but not in the EU, that fact will be known to and respected by reputable suppliers. If considered necessary, regular supply chains can be monitored at the origin or destination.

Whether the backstop has been invoked is of no relevance to the ability to combat smuggling. Smuggling can be detected and deterred, as at a hard border, only by intelligence and random checks, methods that are already employed at the Irish border, for example, to inhibit VAT evasion.

Rejection of a legally binding agreement that the border will be policed by soft border controls will demonstrate beyond doubt that Parliament was right to reject Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement but, furthermore, that even without the backstop, we cannot proceed with negotiations in a situation where the Irish border question remains open – since it will only be closed by a long-term arrangement that replicates the backstop. The only solution is to close the issue now by presenting the EU with a fait accompli on 29th March.

The EU’s position is so ludicrously irrational that it can have only one of two explanations. The first is that they are unbelievably stupid. The alternative is that they regard it as totally impossible that the UK will leave the EU without a deal (and thus the currently offered deal) – but that is despite saying, publicly, that they now see no deal as becoming an increasing possibility.

Since this makes no sense whatsoever, I am confident that, as David Davis told the Exiting the EU Select Committee back in October 2017:

“It’s no secret that the way the union makes its decision tends to be at the 59th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day and so on, and that is precisely what I would expect to happen… If there is a time limit on a negotiation the union stops the clock, it assumes that it’s still at 11:59 until it is concluded, sometimes over the course of 24, 36, 72 hours thereafter and that’s what I imagine it will be.”