I am told Jean-Claude Juncker learned just one thing from Boris Johnson on Monday in Luxembourg.
In the words of one of his colleagues there was “confirmation that the UK (under Johnson) wants more of a border on the island of Ireland than the previous government”.
Which is the nutshell of the whole of what the PM seeks qua new deal and what the EU’s 27 leaders need to evaluate either as deft compromise or as brutal betrayal of Dublin and the Good Friday Agreement.
This dispute harks back to the December 2017 joint agreement between the UK and EU which pledges to prevent the creation of “a hard border including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls”.
This matters because Theresa May’s Brexit – the Withdrawal Agreement – says “any future arrangements [for Ireland] must be compatible with these overarching requirements”.
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