Brexit: Ireland says it won't be threatened over border

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON (AA) - Ireland will not be threatened into abandoning the backstop arrangement for the Irish border, Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a news conference in Dublin a day after the British House of Commons mandated Prime Minister Theresa May to renegotiate with the EU “alternative arrangements” instead of the backstop clause, Coveney said a deal has already been negotiated and agreed.

“We have a deal, the British government was part of that,” Coveney said.

He said: “It’s an extraordinary situation that when a prime minister and a government negotiates a deal and then goes back and during the ratification process votes against their own deal, which is what happened yesterday, and now wants to go back to their negotiating partner and change everything.

“It’s like saying give me what I want or I’m jumping out the window ... We owe it to the people of Ireland, north and south ... We cannot approach this negotiation on the basis of threats.

The Downing Street said May will speak with European Council President Donald Tusk to convey her intention to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement Wednesday afternoon.

Despite Britain seeking to renegotiate the deal, the agreement reached with the EU is not open for re-negotiation, Tusk said on Tuesday.

"The withdrawal agreement is and remains the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the U.K. from the European Union," the council head said in a statement through his spokesman Preben Aamann.

“The backstop is part of the withdrawal agreement, and the withdrawal agreement is not open for re-negotiation,” Tusk added, referring to the measure to avoid a hard Irish border.

Late Tuesday, the British Parliament gave May a mandate to negotiate “alternative arrangements” with the European Union to avoid a hard border.

May underlined that she will ask the EU to negotiate “alternative arrangements” on the issue of the border issue, but failed to fully explain what those arrangements would be despite repeated questions at the House of Commons on Wednesday.

May will meet Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to hear his party’s Brexit policies.

Corbyn had rejected to meet May unless the “no-deal” option is taken off the table but said he was ready to meet her after a non-binding amendment ruling out a no-deal Brexit yesterday saw the majority of MPs voting for it.

May also said she would speak to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar later Wednesday, saying: "It is important for us to work with the Irish government on the arrangements that will be in place in the future."

However, Varadkar told the Irish parliament that the EU stood by the withdrawal agreement and renegotiation was not on the table.

- Parliament vote

On Tuesday, an amendment for Britain to seek “alternative arrangements” with the EU passed the parliament by a vote of 317-301.

May said in a statement afterward that there is a route that could get a “substantial and sustainable majority in this House for leaving the EU with a deal.”

The amendment “requires the Northern Ireland backstop to be replaced with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border, supports leaving the EU with a deal and would therefore support the withdrawal agreement subject to this change.”

British voters decided to leave the EU after the country’s more than 40-year membership in a 2016 referendum.

The U.K. is set to leave the EU on March 29.

- Irish border and backstop

As the U.K. will leave the bloc, the border between Northern Ireland -- a U.K. territory -- and the Republic of Ireland will remain the only land border between the U.K. and the EU.

The border at the moment is invisible, and people, goods and services can travel through it freely. But as the U.K. leaves the EU, the border, technically, will need some sort of checks.

Due to the sensitive nature of the region and because free passage is one of the crucial articles of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the U.K., EU, Northern Ireland and Ireland all reject the idea of returning to a hard border where checkpoints and customs buildings will need to be installed.

The border issue has been one of the thorniest in Brexit talks, as a solution that would be acceptable for all sides is still to be reached.

The main disagreement over the border issue has been over an EU-suggested backstop -- keeping Northern Ireland in the EU single market and customs union after Brexit until a solution is found -- because it would create a sort of a border within the U.K. in the Irish Sea.

May has continuously said they would not give in to any solution that would divide the U.K.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Northern Ireland’s biggest political party, has said it would not agree on any final deal that would separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

Therefore, May negotiated a backstop for the whole of the U.K. and the deal included this after an agreement was reached with the EU. However, the deal was rejected by lawmakers with a majority of 230 votes in a vote on Jan. 15.