EU has a Brexit message for May — Irish backstop is our red line

DUBLIN/BRUSSELS: The European Union has a message for British Prime Minister Theresa May as she plots a path out of the Brexit impasse: a backup plan for the Irish border can be tweaked but will have to be included in any divorce deal.

With less than nine weeks until the United Kingdom is due by law to leave the European Union on March 29, there is no agreement yet in London on how and even whether to leave the world’s biggest trading bloc.

Parliament defeated May’s deal two weeks ago by a huge margin with many Brexit-supporting rebels in her Conservative Party angry at the Irish backstop, an insurance policy aimed at preventing a hard border in Ireland if no other solutions can be agreed.

Ahead of Tuesday’s votes in the British parliament on a way forward, MPs in May’s party are pushing for her to demand the European Union drop the backstop and replace it with something else.

Ireland said the backstop was staying and the European Commission repeated on Monday that the withdrawal agreement text, and its backstop component, is not open for renegotiation. “The European Parliament will not ratify a withdrawal agreement that doesn’t have a backstop in it, it’s as simple as that,” Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney told the BBC.

As the Brexit crisis goes down to the line, however, EU officials indicated there might be wriggle room if May came back with a clear, and viable, request for changes that she - and the EU - believe will secure a final ratification.

The backstop is a type of insurance policy aimed at preventing a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland if no other solutions can be agreed. It is the most contentious part of May’s deal.

The question for May is whether the EU can offer enough to get a variant of her defeated deal through the British parliament. Possible amendments floated by EU officials range from further public assurances that the backstop would probably never be used or only for a brief period to amending the text which accompanies the treaty and which lays out expectations for the trading relationship that will come in after the transition. The EU has explicitly said if Britain were to stay in a customs union indefinitely, as the opposition Labour Party favours, that could leave the backstop redundant.