EU offers to reduce Northern Ireland border checks to ‘a couple of lorries a day’
The EU has offered to reduce checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea into Northern Ireland to a “couple of lorries a day” in an effort to bring the UK back to the negotiating table in the Brexit dispute.
The European Union’s Brexit chief, Maroš Šefčovič, said physical checks would be made only “when there is a reasonable suspicion of illegal trade smuggling, illegal drugs, dangerous toys or poisoned food”.
He told the Financial Times it would mean there was almost no difference between the UK’s demand for “no checks” and the EU’s offer of “minimum checks, done in an invisible manner”.
In an echo of alternative arrangements once mooted by the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party, Šefčovič said the border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland would be made invisible if the EU had real-time access to data on goods entering the country to enable officials stop suspicious vehicles only.
UK sources have this year complained that they have built a system to give access to such data to the EU but Brussels has yet to use it. They have also complained that half a dozen or more customs officials are operating in Belfast with little to do, proving the lack of rogue activity.
Šefčovič’s comments will be seen as a further olive branch to the UK, which has threatened to unilaterally scrap all checks as a way of ending the dispute.
The EU launched seven legal actions against the UK for abandoning some of the checks mandated in the protocol, with a deadline of Thursday 15 September for a formal response.
It had been suggested the UK would use this deadline to trigger article 16 to scrap all barriers, including the bar on the sale of trees, potato seeds and other farm produce from Great Britain in Northern Ireland.
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