HELSINKI: Britain has come up with “nothing credible” to replace the controversial Irish backstop in its deal to leave the EU, Ireland’s foreign minister said Friday.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants the backstop — the fallback provisions for the border between EU member Ireland and UK-ruled Northern Ireland — to be scrapped completely.
With the clock ticking down to the October 31 departure date and Johnson insisting he will not postpone, the EU is pressing Britain to come up with workable alternatives.
“We all want to get a deal but at the moment nothing credible has come from the British government in the context of an alternative to the backstop,” Simon Coveney said as he arrived for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Helsinki.
“If that changes, great. We’ll look at it in Dublin but more importantly, it can be the basis of a discussion in Brussels but it’s got to be credible.”
After talks with his British counterpart Dominic Raab on the sidelines of the Helsinki meeting, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said London must come up with ideas soon.
“I have once again made it clear that it is now necessary for time reasons to put the (proposals) on the table as soon as possible,” Maas told reporters.
Fears among Brexit-supporters that the backstop could leave Britain tied indefinitely to EU rules were a major reason why British MPs voted down the current divorce deal three times.
Brussels and Dublin insist the backstop is essentially to safeguard the EU single market and avoid risking the return of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
Johnson wants to replace the backstop with a commitment to find so-called “alternative arrangements” in the future, but Coveney said this was not good enough.
“We will not allow a really important element of the withdrawal agreement to be removed... to be replaced with something that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and is simply a promise that we’ll do our best to solve the problem but not explain how,” he said.
“That is not an approach that either Ireland or the EU will support.”
Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok echoed the call for concrete proposals from London, saying “you cannot solve that (the Irish border problem) without details.”
Brexit negotiators from the two sides are to meet twice a week throughout September in a bid to find a way through the deadlock, London said on Thursday.
Johnson insists Britain will leave on October 31 come what may — even if it means crashing out in a chaotic “no deal” Brexit that causes economic turmoil.
Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said the prospect of no deal alarmed him.
“No-deal is a catastrophe for both sides, and could cost thousands and thousands of jobs and create misery for no reason,” he said.
“I still hope that reason will prevail.”
Britain has ‘nothing credible’ to replace Brexit backstop: Ireland
Britain has ‘nothing credible’ to replace Brexit backstop: Ireland
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
