'Ní neart go gur le chéile'

'Ní neart go gur le chéile'

On Friday 01 December European Council President, Donald Tusk, made a detour to Dublin on his return to Brussels from the EU Africa summit. In a joint press conference between An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar TD  and Mr Tusk  (which was a very important and timely display of solidarity)  the moment when President Tusk slipped into Gaeilge to utter those six words resonated perhaps more than any other. 

 “The Irish request is the EU’s request. Or as the Irish proverb goes: "Ni neart go cur le chéile”, he said. That stark assertion of fraternity with Ireland was emblematic of the strength in unity which the EU27 have demonstrated ever since the Brexit vote. It set the tone and left no-one in doubt that both the EU Institutions and the other EU Member States would stand shoulder to shoulder with Ireland's justifiable concerns in terms of agreeing the parameters for ‘sufficient progress’ on the unique circumstances Brexit creates on this island as part of Phase 1 of the negotiations. Throughout the tumultuous past week or so in these negotiations, this solidarity never wavered. We have seen that language matters. What is said cannot be unsaid. And what happens and is said in the media and by the media does not go unnoticed across other borders.  

 Indeed, this unity on the ‘Irish question’ has been borne out of a much wider appreciation for Ireland’s unique exposure to Brexit within the EU.

 It has been an incredibly busy number of months at European Movement Ireland and only a few weeks ago we were in Brussels for a series of engagements with European Commission’s Brexit Taskforce 50 officials, the Irish Permanent Representative to the EU, and the European Council’s Task Force on the withdrawal of the UK.  In all of these meetings, I was struck by the uniform support for Ireland and recognition of our concerns by both the Institutions and our various bilateral engagements.  

 As was reiterated, the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland are not just an Irish ‘issue or Irish question,’ but are an EU priority.  It’s important to always remember that the leaders of the EU27 voted unanimously for the unique circumstance on the island of Ireland to be a negotiating priority.  It wasn’t just Iar Taoiseach, Enda Kenny who voted for this back in late April this year, but also the Slovenian Prime Minister, the French President, the Austrian Chancellor, the Romanian President etc. etc. ALL of the  Member State leaders signed off on Ireland being one of the three priorities in phase 1 of the negotiations; this fact sometimes got overlooked in the broader narrative I feel.

 To paraphrase President Tusk, if the key to the UK’s future progression in the Brexit negotiations may in some ways always lay in Dublin, with the prioritising of Ireland,  then the solidity of the lock was undoubtedly forged on unity across all the European Union Member States.  It was never a question of Ireland needing to use a ‘veto,’ rather, if there was not sufficient progress on the Irish issues to get to Phase Two in December; it was because there wasn’t sufficient progress made to satisfy the concerns of the EU27.

 After a busy week and much negotiation and discussion, confirmation of white smoke came on Friday 8 December that we have  the basis of an agreement which all sides were happy with. Of that text, paragraph 49 is the key for Ireland.   It is essentially a safeguard and includes a “guarantee of avoiding a hard border” from the UK. In other words, it seeks to protect against there being a need for one if the overall EU-UK relationship can't solve the ‘Irish question’, by saying that: “In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union.” 

 It is worth emphasising that this does not bring to a close discussion on the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, these will continue in Phase Two of the negotiations where the full details will be worked out by officials in a separate stream of the negotiations as in Phase One. 

 It is also worth re-emphasising that, as it stands, the UK government’s position is still to leave the EU Single Market and Customs Union and that it still remains to be seen how it intends to do so without creating a need for a border on the island of Ireland. The point of paragraph 49 though, is that if it can’t figure out how to do so then at least there is a safeguard in place to protect the Good Friday Agreement, preserve the all-island economy and support North-South co-operation on the island. Therein lays sufficient progress on the Irish issues.

 Indeed, the European Commission recommended to the European Council last Friday that sufficient progress has been made in the first phase of the negotiations with the UK on all three EU priorities. But it’s worth pointing out that this hasn’t been concluded yet, the European Council still needs to conclude that this is the case Thursday and Friday of this week to allow the negotiations to move to the next phase in 2018.   

 So the spectacle of this historic, serious, and at times fraught, first phase of Brexit negotiations has not quite reached its ‘denouement’.  However, I think what this first phase has achieved, is perhaps reinforced and underlined the benefits of being a member of a strong family, of a larger collective that works and to support its constituent (and smaller) parts.

 Ni neart go cur le chéile.

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