As it leaves the European Union, the United Kingdom must figure out what to do about its 310-mile-long border with the Irish Republic, which remains an EU member.
The UK pledges it will not return to the pre-1992 days of a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Yet there doesn’t seem to be any way around this!
Here are the four options being discussed:
Hard border returns (destroying local economy and possibly reigniting armed conflict)
UK uses “technology,” not border posts, to check vehicles and goods crossing border (simply impossible, says everyone else)
Northern Ireland joins customs union with Irish Republic (which means a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK!)
Northern Ireland unites with Irish Republic (!!)
I personally cannot wait to see how they square this circle.
Leave things as they are, and everyone quietly agrees to never mention the open border?
Seriously though, it’s a massive sticking point. It’s one of the three issues that must be addressed before the Brexit negotiations can progress - along with the rights of EU citizens in the UK, and the exit payment - and it is by far the most difficult one. It’s practically a showstopper, to my mind.
A technological solution doesn’t have to work 100% as nothing does–it just has to reduce the problems to an acceptable level. Back when there was a hard border there was still a substantial amount of smuggling. Even with both Ireland and the UK still in the EU there are still concerns about smuggling concerning a sugar tax in Ireland which opponents think will result in smuggling:
Can someone explain to this dumb American why Brexit makes such a big difference? I mean, if I understand the situation correctly, there are open borders between EU and non-EU countries elsewhere in Europe (e.g., Switzerland and its neighbors), and there aren’t open borders between the UK / Ireland zone and the rest of the EU. Why can’t they simply keep their current arrangement in place, irrespective of the UK’s membership in the EU?
They could, but since the UK has not negotiated the terms of its exit from the EU, no one knows whether they will keep the current arrangement in place.
The UK has always been suspicious of the movement of people back and forth from the EU, and opted out of the Schengen Area Agreement, which allows for easy flow of people between most EU nations and four non-EU nations. The Common Travel Area Agreement covers movement between EU member Ireland and soon to be non-EU member the UK, the UK government has publicly stated that it wishes to keep this agreement intact, and Ireland would also like to keep the agreement intact. The way this could get derailed is that a new UK government decides it doesn’t want to keep the agreement, and/or something goes horribly wrong during negotiations and one side or the other believes it can use the Common Travel Area as a bargaining chip.
I don’t know how this is likely to be a “show-stopper” but then my knowledge of internal UK politics is very limited. Is there a constituency which would rejoice at seeing the agreement revoked?
The UK is a bit unique, their main complaint about immigration is that there are too many people from eastern Europe who are working legally in the UK as part of the EU’s free movement of people. An open border with Ireland would allow people from EU countries to go to Ireland first and then cross into the UK.
Yeah, they should just cancel Brexit. Better to renege on whatever promises Cameron made and have a more workable arrangement than to get in more and more trouble trying to keep a promise made by a PM who immediately resigned when the vote came in.
Maybe it’s my American bias but why would having a border between the two countries be such a big issue? The United States has a border with Canada and we manage to have friendly relations despite it. Norway and Sweden seem to get along okay and so does Switzerland and its EU neighbors. An international border doesn’t have to be a symbol of hostility.
OK, but if (after Brexit) they would still need a UK work permit to work in the UK, why is the ability to get there without passing through UK border control a problem? I mean, heck, as an American I can easily go to Ireland as a tourist and cross over into the UK, or vice versa (and I assume this would also be true for most people from the EU even after Brexit); that doesn’t mean I can get a job in either country.
Did you follow the news during the last election? The United States also has a order with Mexico and there was… more than one mention of issues about it, and has been for all the decades that I’ve followed politics. Immigration is a huge issue in America, and part of the winner’s presidential campaign was about putting a wall up along one border, so I’d expect Americans to get that borders can cause issues.
Yes, I did. Which is why I referenced Canada instead of Mexico.
Lots of countries have hostile borders. But I was pointing out it’s not inevitable. The United Kingdom and Ireland can have cordial relations if they wish even if there’s a hard border between their countries.
Are you familiar with the Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement? The Anglo-Irish War? There is a lot of very ugly history involved here that is very complex and hardly ancient–the British and the Irish were killing each other as recently as 1998, and the sectarian divisions are very much still there. We’re not even 20 years out from the Troubles and nobody wants to risk pouring gasoline on a fire that was hopefully going out by disrupting the border and violating the GFA.
In those examples, there’s not quite the same history of violent disagreement, marked at times by near civil war and ongoing terrorism, as to whether one of the territories involved should come within the sovereignty of the other.
In this case, part of the (largely but not yet totally effective) solution to that problem has been completely open borders (i.e., people commuting backwards and forwards for work or leisure, and goods passing backwards and forwards for processing and sale, and all without any documents and checks, as if the difference in national governments were as irrelevant as the difference in local governments.
In the circumstances, the possible re-imposition of regulations as to documentary checks, product standards, trade tariffs and so on, makes a real difference, in terms of both practical convenience and the historical symbolism. There are still some people around who would claim it a sacred national duty to bomb border posts and shoot at customs officials.
IMO the US-Canada border is the cautionary tale, not the good example. It’s much “harder” than it needs to be, and consequently the economies of both countries suffer, but domestic superstitions block the government of either country from doing the right thing and cutting the red tape.
It’s also a (long held) desire for the UK to maintain control over who it lets in, not just (currently) legal immigrants from the EU, but also illegal immigrants crossing over from, eg, Turkey into Greece, or Libya into Italy.
It’s worth noting that Ireland is also, currently, not a member of the Schengen zone, precisely because it opted to keep an open border with the UK instead.
I guess one option to maintaining an open border would be an agreement from Ireland to maintain border checks with the rest of the EU, and not join Schengen.
That’s beside the point. Schengen is about who checks the documentation, not about who controls the legal criteria for admission. Even outwith Schengen, the UK as an EU member is bound by the freedom of movement principle, and could not require other EU citizens to have work permits to take up a job in the UK. Even if the Republic remains outwith Schengen, but a common travel area remains with no border checks, there’s nothing to stop any EU citizen who enters the Republic from making their way to the UK.
Besides, there’s the issue of trading standards, tariffs and custom checks when production processes currently have goods passing backwards and forwards across the Irish border as on their way to finished products.
