I believe GP is referring to the EU 'forcing' the UK to put a border between Britain and Northern Ireland, because the EU wanted a hard border somewhere and wouldn't budge on that.
Well, the UK wanted Northern Irelend to benefit from a have-your-cake-and-eat-it semi-membership of the EU, while actively denying that to the rest of their own people elsewhere in the UK.
The EU have offered many opportunities for the UK to harmonise with the EU on many issues, while continuing with Brexit. For the most part, UK rejected repeated offers that would grant UK people and businesses more rights.
For example, the rights of British people to freely travel in EU countries could have been kept, but the UK said we don't want our people to have that, as the price of mirroring it by allowing EU citizens the ability to travel in the UK is too high.
EU offered to let students from the UK travel through EU under the Erasmus scheme. UK said no.
EU offered a customs union, where standards were more harmonised and the would need to be far fewer checks at borders. That would have been far cheaper for every business in the UK that sells into the EU. UK rejected that. UK actively wants to diverge from EU standards (e.g. for things like food). It shouldn't be surprising that EU will protect businesses that conform to those standards over those seeking to undermine them.
Businesses in Northern Ireland currently have advantageous access to the EU in ways no other part of the UK does. I don't mean the physical access to Ireland, I mean administrative access to the EU markets. You can see it in tax and import/export forms. There are currently reasons to set up businesses in Northern Irelend to get that foot-in-both-worlds advantage.
A lot of businesses in the UK mainland would love to have the same rights as businesses in Northern Ireland. Especially those in Scotland who didn't vote to leave anyway, and see it as an England-imposed harm on them.
What would you expect should happen, that UK should be allowed to use Nothern Ireland as backdoor to send unchecked goods to the EU, imported from say the USA and Australia and re-exported into the whole EU market with no border checks anywhere?
> What would you expect should happen, that UK should be allowed to use Nothern Ireland as backdoor to send unchecked goods to the EU, imported from say the USA and Australia and re-exported into the whole EU market with no border checks anywhere?
Of course not. That's exactly GGP's point I was trying to prove.
> The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce.
But the issue was not EU control, rather the Ireland situation. The situation due solely to brexit required checks somewhere. Do you want new riots and civil war due to checks within Ireland? Should Ireland accept to effectively leave the common market and all its benefits just so there's no check between UK and Northern Ireland? Or this option.
The UK killed all other scenarios by insisting that it wants to freely deviate from everything - if it had gone the Norway route or just stayed in the Union no such checks would be needed.
Brexit was a slim non-binding referendum run ammock for party-internal politics of the Tories. Absurd from start to finish and now you want to blame the EU for the consequences?
> Brexit was a slim non-binding referendum run ammock for party-internal politics of the Tories. Absurd from start to finish and now you want to blame the EU for the consequences?
I'm not saying that I agree with how things have turned out, nor am I blaming the EU, rather, just pointing out that they do have much control over global commerce.
And this is anecdotal evidence of that.
The EU could've had an internal border within it's own market, but that wasn't an option because they didn't want Ireland to be cut off. Both the EU and UK had the same desire, but the EU had the upper hand due to their economic size and control.
> The EU could've had an internal border within it's own market, but that wasn't an option because they didn't want Ireland to be cut off.
That's not an EU decision as you're suggesting there.
Ireland isn't some vassal state. It's an equal partner.
Ireland itself doesn't want to cut Ireland off from the EU.
It's not for the EU to decide something like that. It's an Ireland decision, and in fact the power to do so resides with Ireland.
If Ireland had wanted to align with the UK and separate from the EU, they could have, and they still have the power to do so. Of course they don't want to, why would they. They've benefited enormously from EU membership, and one of those benefits now is that the EU often protects the interests of Ireland - as determined by Ireland - in negotiations with the UK.
It is important to remember that the EU is not actually a top down system, even though it can seem that way. Any member country is free to leave simply by giving notice, and cease to partake of the benefits of membership. The EU's laws are clear on this.
> The EU could've had an internal border within it's own market, but that wasn't an option because they didn't want Ireland to be cut off.
Eh? No, it couldn’t; Ireland would obviously veto that. Outside of the fevered imagination of Boris Johnson, that was never an actual option.
I think there was a Brexiter theory that Ireland would do this voluntarily, and become a sort of UK dependency, but this was never at all realistic.
I wouldn’t discount the possibility that some major brexit figures actually believed this would happen and were surprised that it didn’t, because they’re, well, not winning any prizes for competence (you may remember David Davis believing that the UK could make a trade deal with Germany, say…) But no-one serious ever bought this concept.
You have it the other way around. Brexit was FOR a hard border. One that would keep the EU out.
But the central British government, which does not seem to care much about their Northern Irish citizens, either forgot or just didn't care at all, about the fact that Northern Ireland is in limbo, stuck between Ireland and the UK. So any kind of EU - UK split would have reopened old wounds.
Wounds which actually the EU helped heal, back in 1998.
That’s really more a situation that the UK put itself in. The EU didn’t force it to ratify the Good Friday Agreement.
Given that the UK is a party to the Good Friday Agreement, AND it wants to leave the EU and no longer comply with EU law, the current situation, or something very similar, is inevitable. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
Yes I agree. However neither side left with their dignity intact if you ask me. It was depressing to watch and the media circus around it was a train wreck.
EU adopting this measure means the enforcement will likely be corrupt and impossible to enforce standards.