Re: What a surprise
The EU does understand that
Well, based on Macron's recent comments about the status of NI he clearly doesn't.
but what exactly do you expect them to do here? Allow goods to freely cross the border into the EU without tariffs or checks?
Of course not, but it would be nice to see a level playing field, and some less-vindictive actions. At the moment the EU applies far more checks in that little bit of Irish Sea than it does for all the other 66,000km of EU coastline. This includes, for example, banning a UK supermarket from shipping own-brand goods to sell in its Belfast branches, on the pretext that they might be illegally transported across the border. This completely ignores the obvious fact that the supermarket in question has no branches in the RoI, so would have nowhere to sell such smuggled goods, even were it stupid enough to want to. It's far easier to bring bulk contraband into and out of the EU via places like Greek and Italian islands than it would be to take it across the Irish border.
Free movement of people between the UK and Ireland still works much as it has for the past 100 years, because Ireland is an island. Anyone who did cross into the RoI would be unable to get to the rest of the EU without papers, because that would be detected at the Irish border. It should be possible to apply similar principles to shipping commercial goods (no-one is is likely to care about the odd personal item any more than they did before). Any company caught faking paperwork to cheat could, and should, be crucified in the EU courts, few if any would risk it.
The reality is that the EU needs Brexit to fail, not least in order to head off the current challenges in Poland and the Czech Republic. Finding a common-sense win-win solution to the border issue simply isn't in the EU's own interest.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
