Theresa May 'preparing to accept Dublin demands' on Northern Ireland to clinch Brexit deal
2 min read
Theresa May is set to concede to Dublin's demands that Northern Ireland maintain the same trading rules as the Republic after Brexit, it has been reported.
According to Irish state broadcaster RTE, the UK will agree to "continued regulatory alignment" between the two countries in order to clinch a deal in Brussels today.
The Prime Minister is due to have lunch with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier to thrash out the small print of an agreement. She is then due to hold talks with European Council president Donald Tusk.
Mrs May is hoping that a deal can be struck which will allow next week's EU Council summit to agree that sufficient progress has been made to allow the negotiations to move on to trade talks in the New Year.
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar has previously warned that his government will reject any attempts to move the Brexit negotiations onto the next phase without a guarantee there would be no return to a hard border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
However, the DUP - whose 10 MPs prop up Mrs May's minority government - have warned they will not accept any moves which treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK.
A draft text of an agreement seen by RTE says: "In the absence of agreed solutions the UK will ensure that there continues to be no divergence from those rules of the internal market and the customs union which, now or in the future, support North South cooperation and the protection of the Good Friday Agreement."
A senior source in the Department for Exiting the European Union described the report as "speculation".
A spokesman for Mrs May said: "The Prime Minister has been clear that the United Kingdom is leaving the EU as a whole and that the territorial and economic integrity of the UK will be protected."
Meanwhile, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator, said the chances of a deal today were "50/50".
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