BREXIT: EU ready to offer new assurance on Irish backstop

French President Emmanuel Macron, front left, German chancellor Angela Merkel, 3rd right, and President of the European Council Donald Tusk, 2nd right. Picture: AP.

The EU has refused to renegotiate the Brexit withdrawal agreement but is open to giving legally binding assurances that the Irish backstop will not be used to trap Britain in a customs union.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, issued a statement immediately after MPs voted to back the Brady amendment, which supported Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement if there was “a significant and legally binding change” to the Northern Ireland backstop.

“The withdrawal agreement is and remains the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the European Union,” Mr Tusk said. “The backstop is part of the withdrawal agreement, and the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.”

Mr Tusk followed President Macron of France who, speaking in Cyprus, said that the withdrawal agreement was the “best deal possible and not renegotiable”. He called on Mrs May to “quickly present … the next steps that will prevent a no-deal exit that nobody wants but for which we must all prepare ourselves”.

Privately, EU officials and ambassadors handling contacts between Britain and European governments said last night that the talks could result in extra, legally binding assurances as an addition to the backstop.

“Anything that implies changing the withdrawal agreement will not fly,” said one European ambassador. “We could add additional language through several different formats including legally binding ones but that is as far as we can go.”

The British Prime Minister is expected to arrive in Brussels for talks in the next two weeks before a deadline of February 13. She spoke to Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, yesterday afternoon.

One senior EU diplomat, responding to the vote in favour of the Brady amendment, said: “It will be about semantics, over what the word change means.”

The EU has rejected reopening the withdrawal agreement because the French, Dutch, Danes, Italians, Spanish and others think the current text makes too many concessions to Britain. Moves to renegotiate would lead to new, tougher demands on Britain aligning to EU single market rules in the backstop, access for European boats to UK fishing waters and veto for Spain over Gibraltar.

Short of a full renegotiation, European governments are ready to be flexible on additional language that would be added to the withdrawal agreement for ratification by both sides if Mrs May can show such a concession would pass the Commons.

EU sources said assurances could take the form of a new interpretative text, giving legal commitments to make all attempts possible to complete a full trade deal before June 2020, setting aspirational end dates and stipulating that the backstop could only be operational for a “short period”.

In October 2016, a legal fix, or “joint interpretative statement”, helped Belgium ratify the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada (Ceta) after a veto by the Walloon regional parliament.

Whitehall and EU sources have indicated that the “Ceta option” has previously been raised by Britain as a sufficient legal guarantee for the backstop.

The Times