Boris Johnson wants Ireland to leave EU trade rules and form a new union with the UK after Brexit
Boris Johnson reportedly wants Ireland to agree to temporarily leave it’s trading partnership with the EU and join with the UK instead.
The plan is one of the “creative solutions” Johnson plans to raise with EU leaders this week.
Ireland described the proposal as “worrying” and dismissed any suggestion that the country would align with the UK.
Johnson is due to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday evening.
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Boris Johnson reportedly wants Ireland to agree to temporarily leave it’s trading union with the EU and join with the UK instead after Brexit.
The Sun newspaper reports that Downing Street is considering asking Ireland to voluntarily diverge from EU rules in order to prevent a hard border between the two countries after Britain leaves the EU.
Under the plan Ireland would gain a “special dispensation” from Brussels to leave their trading rules until new “alternative arrangements” to the Northern Ireland backstop are established.
A senior minister in Johnson’s government told The Sun: “The solution is a bilateral agreement to agree a common rule book for Britain and Ireland for as long we need one.”
They added that “Ideally though, the EU would formally propose it rather than us [so] it is more acceptable to the Irish.”
Read more: The EU reject Boris Johnson’s new Brexit demands before he even sits down with European leaders.
Ireland described the proposal as “worrying.”
“This is an EU-UK matter, we are the EU, there is no scope for a bilateral agreement,” Fine Gael’s Brexit spokesperson Neale Richmond tweeted, adding that the proposal was a “worrying pivot,” by the UK government.
The idea is supposedly one of the “creative solutions” Johnson is planning to raise with EU leaders this week.
“There are plenty of other creative solutions [to the border issue]” Johnson told ITV news on Tuesday.
“I’m going …read more
Source:: Business Insider
