According to the UK Implementation Plan (July 2020), a system for controlling goods entering from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will require three types of electronic documents, as described in an eleven-page document. [97] Barnier told French radio station RTL: „The time is too short to find an alternative solution to the Irish backstop and the UK`s divorce treaty with the European Union will not be reopened to negotiations.“ [66] However, the Legal Counsel also stated that the instrument did not reduce the likelihood that the UK would be kept backstop if no bad faith on the part of the EU had been demonstrated. Former British Prime Minister John Major has argued that Brexit could lead to a hard border, with the European Union and the UK having to control their borders for customs purposes. [54] The Conservative Party research group believes that the UK may have the choice of not controlling its border if VAT is not imposed or controlling the border to apply possible VAT on goods imported after Brexit. [55] [56] On 29 March 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May launched the two-year Brexit negotiation process, with a deadline of Article 50 of the EU Treaty. [9] In response, the other EU countries (EU27) published their „phased“ negotiating strategy, which postponed all negotiations on future relations with the UK (the non-binding „political declaration“) until a binding withdrawal agreement was reached: according to the draft withdrawal agreement, the UK would enter a „transitional period“ after Brexit (currently set for 31 October 2019). Since this article was originally published in October 2018, the political situation around the backstop has changed. This is a summary of the main developments: a new analysis that we have just concluded shows that Parliament`s objection to the backstop amounts to an implicit rejection of the Good Friday Agreement, the agreement that ended the armed conflict in Northern Ireland. The reasons why Parliament opposes the „backstop“ are precisely what made the peace agreement work. This is a unilateral measure by the British government, that is, it only applies to goods that depart from Ireland to Northern Ireland. The „Irish Backstop“ is practically an insurance policy in the Brexit negotiations between Britain and the EU. It aims to keep the Irish border open (as it is today), regardless of the outcome of negotiations between the UK and the EU on their future post-Brexit relations. The terms of the backstop were finalized in November 2018.
The full advice was published later, showing that the terms of the backstop could mean that the UK could face „long and repeated rounds of negotiations.“ [68] In March 2019, further notices were issued that the Vienna Convention on Treaty Law could be used if it turned out that the backstop had a „socially destabilizing effect on Northern Ireland“. [69] The Irish backstop has been highly controversial among some MEPs and is one of the main reasons why the withdrawal agreement has not yet been adopted by Parliament. New Prime Minister Boris Johnson now says the backstop is „dead.“ The rest of this piece explains how the political situation around the backstop has evolved over time and why the Irish border is an important subject. Brussels rejected Johnson`s move to eliminate the backstop, making a no-deal Brexit a virtual certainty on 31 October. Given the EU`s interest in maintaining the internal market and the UK`s obligations as a member of the World Trade Organisation, the prospects for a hard border within Ireland seem inevitable in this case.
