EU leaders are unlikely to take any decisions on Brexit on Wednesday night and will agree to await a positive signal of serious progress from negotiators before convening another special Brexit summit, Simon Coveney has said.
Mr Coveney was speaking to journalists in Luxembourg after a bilateral meeting with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
A gloomy Donald Tusk said in Brussels that he "had no grounds for optimism" on Brexit at the summit. To see a breakthrough, said the president of the European Council, "we need new facts", and he would ask UK prime minister Theresa May "whether she has concrete proposals to break the impasse".
But Mr Coveney, the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, said his discussion with Mr Barnier left him “confident that a deal can still be done” and that “solidarity with Ireland is strong, if not stronger than it has ever been”.
The Austrian presidency’s message was that that unity of the 27 “is more important than ever” and was the only basis for a deal.
Mr Barnier was reporting to European affairs ministers and to MEPs’ representatives, and on Wednesday, ahead of the summit opening this evening, he will speak to the commission. On his way in yesterday he said simply they needed more time and would be working for a deal “within weeks”.
No time limit
Asked about Irish concerns that any backstop would not be time-limited, Mr Coveney emphasised that what had been agreed was that the backstop would remain in place “unless and until something better is agreed”.
He made clear that the comprehensive trade agreement the UK hopes to agree with the EU as its future relationship would have to surpass the backstop’s protections of the frictionless border.
The backstop was not an ideal solution, he said, but a necessary guarantee to the Northern Ireland communities that a return to the border of the past would be impossible – in Mr Barnier's phrase, en toutes hypotheses – in any circumstances.
“Nobody wants to use the backstop but we have to insist that it is there and legally operable as an insurance mechanism in case the future relationship doesn’t solve the Irish Border question.”
“Of course what we would like,” Mr Coveney added, “is a future trading relationship that is so comprehensive as to not require any border infrastructure on the island of Ireland or anywhere else for that matter between the UK and the EU single market and customs union . . .
“It remains to be seen whether it’s possible to negotiate a possible trading arrangement that is that comprehensive,” he said. But that is why the backstop guarantee is needed as a fallback.
Brexiteer fears
That expectation of the scope of a future relationship deal is precisely why the UK feels it cannot accept EU language on the backstop and specifically on there being no expiration date – to sign up to the backstop in this form, they fear, is effectively to sign up to the customs union and the single market in perpetuity.
The summit opens on Wednesday night. A dinner devoted to Brexit will be addressed by Ms May before she leaves the 27 remaining leaders to hear Mr Barnier’s assessment of the talks.
The meeting continues on Thursday with discussions on migration, internal and external security and the future of the euro, before leaders reconvene to greet 21 Asian leaders as the EU-Asia summit.
On Wednesday afternoon Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will join fellow centre-right leaders for the European People’s Party pre-summit meeting. Also in attendance will be party colleagues European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and Mr Barnier, as well as Mr Tusk.
