By Dylan O'sillivan-
Northern Ireland may be considered part of European Union customs territory post-Brexit, according to Irish national broadcaster RTE.
The deal is being presented as part of a draft legal text to be published by the European Commission on Wednesday, RTE reported.
Under the arrangements, Northern Ireland will be compelled to continue to abide by EU regulations after Brexit in order to guarantee there will not be a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, Guy Verhofstadt has said.
The European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator said there should be “no divergence” between Northern Ireland and its southern neighbor.
Instead, “norms, rules, and standards” must stay the same after Brexit, he said.
HARD BOARDER
The whole issue between the EU and the UK concerns the avoidance of a hard border on the island of Ireland. On Wednesday, the EU will publish a text which will translate the political pledges made by both sides at the end of 2017 into legally-binding treaty language. It will concern only divorce-related issues – not the future relationship.
Under strict arrangements, a joint EU-UK customs teams will be required to apply checks on goods coming from the UK into the new regulatory space. The locations of those checks will not be spelled out in the draft.
The text is also expected to say that the two other options preferred by the UK to avoid a hard border are also available and that if an agreement is reached on those options, the above scenario would not apply.
The position of Northern Ireland in the EU single market is expected to be left out of the draft.The text will also have considerable detail on how the movement of goods, north and south, will be facilitated without any border checks. It remains to be seen how the challenges posed by Brexit will be resolved on the various fronts.