One of the EU’s most senior leaders has said all member states will accept the first draft of the Brexit withdrawal treaty published on Wednesday, amid furore in Westminster over the EU’s plan for avoiding a hard border on Ireland.
Donald Tusk, the European council president, said he was “absolutely sure that all the essential elements of the draft will be accepted by all”. He stressed that the bloc’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier – whose team drafted the Ireland protocol – had the full support of the EU institutions and the 27 member states that will remain in the union when Britain leaves.
The intervention came just hours before Tusk was due to meet Theresa May at 10 Downing Street. Piling pressure on the prime minister before a major speech on Brexit on Friday, Tusk said the British government could come up with a better plan to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, which the UK and EU had pledged to do in December.
“Until now no one has come up with anything wiser than [the EU plan],” he said. “In a few hours I will be asking whether the UK government has a better idea that will be as effective in preventing a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.”
The EU has outlined three options for avoiding a hard border: a deep free-trade agreement with the UK; “specific solutions” for the island of Ireland that depend heavily on technology; or, failing both of those, Northern Ireland remaining in “full regulatory alignment” with the European Union.
On Wednesday the EU spelt out exactly what the third option meant: Northern Ireland would be subject to EU rules on customs and goods, animals and plants. This insurance option in effect puts the UK-EU border in the Irish sea, a plan that is anathema to the Democratic Unionist party that is propping up May government.
Tusk said the bloc was responding to the UK’s red lines, which it acknowledged “without enthusiasm or satisfaction”. EU negotiators argue that the problem of the Irish border could be solved if the whole of the UK remained in a customs union with the EU and followed a swath of single market rules.
The UK’s preferred technological solutions are regarded with deep scepticism in Brussels but remain a theoretical option.
“Everyone must be aware that the UK red lines will also determine the shape of our future relationship,” Tusk said. “I want to stress one thing clearly: there can be no frictionless trade outside the customs union and the single market. Friction is an inevitable side-effect of Brexit by nature.”
Tusk’s comments reflected a meeting between EU27 diplomats and Barnier after the publication of the draft agreement on Wednesday. Those present were said to have expressed particular alarm at the comments from the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, in which he had suggested the UK could be willing to countenance a harder border.
A senior source told the Guardian the UK would have to agree a withdrawal agreement with the EU “if it wants to get to the sunny uplands of trade and transition”.
In a sign of the EU’s frustration with the UK, the European commission’s vice-president, Frans Timmermans, told MEPs that it was time for those in positions of power in Britain to publicly admit the consequences that would flow from the prime minister’s red lines.
“Those who championed Brexit are also under the responsibility to explain to their constituents why this is going to be such a tremendous success,” he said. “And it is just too easy to then invent a situation as if we were there to punish them. It is not our fault that things are not working out.”
Speaking on a visit to see key figures on the EU side of the negotiations, Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said Labour’s clear commitment to negotiate a new customs union arrangement and a deal on access to the single market had been welcomed in Brussels.
He said: “The government has had 20 months to come up with a workable proposal for avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland. It has singularly failed to do so. By setting out the case for being in a customs union with the EU and maintaining a strong relationship with the single market, Labour has put forward an approach that not only supports our economy but also avoids a hard border in Northern Ireland.
“There is widespread support for Labour’s approach which has been well received. The prime minister should now follow Labour’s lead.”
