Donald Tusk has said there is a “special place in hell” for those who advocated Brexit without knowing how to deliver it, as he urged Theresa May to make realistic proposals for breaking a deadlock over the Irish border.
The EU council president warned that there will be no new EU proposal to unlock Brexit talks over the controversial Irish backstop, which is vehemently opposed by much of Mrs May’s Conservative party and her DUP allies. The EU27 sees this as an essential guarantee that customs controls and other checks will not be needed after Brexit.
But in a sign of the EU’s frustrations about the UK’s uncertain position with Brexit only weeks away, Mr Tusk said he had been “wondering what a special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan for how to carry it out”.
Mr Tusk’s remarks also appeared to mark a change of tack. As a politician who had been outspoken in his urgings for the UK to reverse course and stay in the EU, he appeared to accept that the battle had been lost.
“The facts are unmistakable,” he said. “Today there is no political force and no effective leadership for remain. At the moment the pro-Brexit stance of the UK prime minister and the leader of the opposition rules out this question.”
He underlined that “the EU27 is not making any new offer”, and that EU leaders had decided in December that Britain’s withdrawal agreement would not be reopened.
Speaking alongside Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar, he also stressed that the successes of the peace process could not be jeopardised to suit the politics of Brexit. “We will not put a sell-by-date on reconciliation,” he said.
Mr Varadkar’s trip in Brussels comes as the EU readies itself for an attempt by the UK to revisit the backstop plans, which involves Northern Ireland having a close customs and regulatory relationship with the EU, while different arrangements apply for the rest of the UK.
His visit comes a day before Mrs May heads to the EU capital for talks with Mr Tusk and other EU chiefs on how to resolve the issue, which contributed to a defeat of historic proportions when Mrs May’s Brexit deal was put to a vote in the British parliament in January.
The Irish leader’s trip was used as an opportunity for Dublin and EU chiefs to underline their joint determination to resist attempts to weaken the backstop.
The House of Commons voted last week in favour of an amendment calling for the current plans to be ditched and replaced by “alternative arrangements” — such as technological solutions that Brussels says do not exist.
The Irish leader said that the British parliament’s difficulty to come up with a Brexit strategy showed “exactly why we need a legal guarantee” that the border will remain open.
Mr Varadkar will also meet Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, late on Wednesday.
Mrs May underlined on Tuesday that she was not trying to ditch the concept of a backstop but was only seeking “changes” to the controversial measure — comments that rattled Eurosceptics in the Conservative party.
“I’m not proposing to persuade people to accept a deal that doesn’t contain that insurance policy for the future,” she said in Belfast.
