The Irish Government, in the event of a chaotic Brexit without agreement, will apply substantial additional agricultural subsidies from Brussels. That said the country’s agriculture minister, Michael Creed, the Irish Independent.
It’s about hundreds of millions of euros. „The beef producers and the fishermen are talking about really big money.“
Britain is the most important market for Irish food – for example, according to Creed, 50 percent of the beef produced in Ireland goes to the UK. Should Britain leave the EU on 29 March 2019 without any agreement, there could be substantial tariffs on Irish exports there.
„There is a high level of awareness of Ireland’s unique dependence on the British food market,“ Creed said, adding, „But I think nobody wants to talk about it now, because there’s still hope and expectation that there’s a sense of purpose will prevail. »
Ireland’s head of government Leo Varadkar said on Thursday according to own data in a approximately 40-minute telephone conversation with Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) among other things about preparations for a Brexit without agreement.
The UK Parliament is scheduled to vote on the EU exit in the third week of January on the Brussels-negotiated treaty. If the deal is rejected – what it looks like so far – threatens on March 29, an unregulated exit. Thousands of rules for cross-border trade and traffic between Britain and the EU would be abruptly invalidated. Border controls would have to be introduced.
Such a scenario would be particularly problematic for the border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. Border controls here want to avoid all sides – for fear that decades of bloody conflict could break out again. Creed announced, according to the report, that there would be no controls on agricultural products on the inner-Irish border. However, the country has already recruited hundreds of specialists for the Dublin and Rosslare ports.
So far, there is no need for physical checks between Ireland and the United Kingdom because they both belong to the European Customs Union and the EU single market. However, the British government wants to withdraw from both with the Brexit.
How the controls in the future to be permanently prevented, is still unclear. The exit agreement stipulates that Britain will remain in a customs union with the EU until a long-term solution is found. However, the Brexit hardliners in the conservative governing party reject this. They fear that the country could otherwise be kept permanently in the international community.
May hopes for assurances from the EU and the member states that the „backstop“ rule will only be temporary. But Brussels does not want to change the text of the treaty anymore. Ireland’s Prime Minister Varadkar made it clear that the „backstop“ could not be softened. He agreed with Merkel to stick to the agreement, Varadkar said Thursday after a Cabinet meeting in Dublin.
