As Theresa May sits down to lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker to try and persuade the EU Commission to give Britain the green light to talk trade, confusion reigns over what concessions the UK government is making in order to do this. There are reports that a solution to the Irish border has been found. A draft version is said to promise ‘continued regulatory alignment’ – if no solutions are found:
‘In the absence of agreed solutions the UK will ensure that there continues to be continued regulatory alignment with those rules of the internal market + customs union which, now or in the future, support North South cooperation +protection of the GFA.’
Given that this seems to suggest that Northern Ireland could be bound by EU regulations (and the rest of the UK could not), it appears to potentially cross several unionist red lines, not least the DUP’s.
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