By Ben Kerrigan-
Emmanuel Macron has told Boris Johnson during a meeting in Paris for Brexit talks, that the Ireland-Northern Ireland backstop plan was “indispensable” to preserving political stability and the single market.
The French resident warned that any withdrawal agreement that the two sides might reach in the next month wouldn’t be very different from the existing one. And he asked for more “visibility” from the UK on its alternative proposals. Mr Macron said he was “very much confident” that the UK and EU would be able to find a solution within 30 days – a timetable suggested by Mrs Merkel – “if there is a good will on both sides”. He did make clear that it would not be possible to find a new withdrawal agreement “very different from the existing one” within that time, but added that an answer could be reached “without reshuffling” the current deal.
ENERGY AND CREATIVITY
Mr Johnson said that with “energy and creativity we can find a way forward”. The British prime minister said he had been “powerfully encouraged” by his conversations with Mrs Merkel in Berlin on Wednesday.
He emphasized his desire for a deal with the EU but added that it was “vital for trust in politics” that the UK left the EU on 31 October. He also said that “under no circumstances” would the UK put checks or controls on the Ireland-UK border.
Mr Johnson has always been insistent that the backstop be ditched if a no-deal exit from the EU on 31 October is to be avoided. He considers the inclusion of the backstop to be a way of binding the UK tied to the EU indefinitely, contrary to the result of the 2016 referendum, in which 52% of voters opted to leave.
British Prime Minister: Boris Johnson
With Macron’s confirmation that the withdrawal agreement previously hashed out with Theresa May will not change much, the situation seems to be at as much a dead end as ever, but Boris Johnson will now have to demonstrate through his creative ideas that a better way forward exists. He has 29 days now to do so, if the clock started ticking from yesterday when the deadline was first given.