EU will not back down on
Northern Ireland: Barnier

The former chief Brexit negotiator for the bloc said that Brexit had not yielded any benefits for the UK and described it as “a unilateral decision by one party with negative impacts for itself”.

During an address in Iveagh House in Dublin city, Mr Barnier said Brexit also remained “a challenge” for Ireland, and “a blow” to the EU.

“Brexit is in great part the result of populism. We must be aware that this poison might still arm Europe again. But populism must not be mistaken with public opinion or public sentiment.”

Mr Barnier argued that being a part of the EU never stopped ‘a global Britain’.

“Do you remember so many speeches of the Brexiteers – Farage, Johnson and some others – speaking everyday about ‘global Britain’? Frankly speaking, I never understand what prevent UK to be a global Britain inside the EU (sic). Nobody prevented Germany from being a global Germany.”

He said that he had worked with “objectivity, without any kind of ideology” to find operational solutions to Brexit, despite “dogmatism from the consecutive Conservative British governments”.

He said: “The European Union must not and will not back down, and the protocol of Ireland and Northern Ireland must and has to be respected by the British government. This is international law.”

Simon Coveney said progress could be made on calls to change the operation of the protocol. “The only way we can remove checks on certain products is if we know those products are staying in Northern Ireland, and are not at risk to the rest of the single market, and I think we can do a lot in that space actually.”

The EU Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic will this week meet the UK foreign secretary James Cleverly.