The Common Travel Area could be a more difficult issue for Ireland in Brexit negotiations than minimising customs controls on the Border, Dublin MEP Brian Hayes has warned.
Speaking in London after a meeting with chancellor Philip Hammond, the Fine Gael MEP expressed confidence the customs issue could be resolved in a way that caused minimum disadvantage to both Britain and the EU.
“The principle problem is the Common Travel Area because were the Europeans to agree that they effectively would be agreeing for one member state a kind of side-bar agreement whereby rights to one member state would not be extended to other member states.”
The British government has identified maintaining the Common Travel Area as one of its priorities in the negotiations, and Taoiseach Enda Kenny said last week he was confident it would survive after Brexit.
Mr Hayes said that although he believed the issues around the Common Travel Area could be resolved, it was important to recognise how substantial they were.
European law
“There’s no mechanism in European law which allows one member state to have fundamental rights which are not obtainable in another member state. And we can talk as much as we like about the fact that this was in place before 1973, but it still has to be negotiated.”
Mr Hayes was in London as part of a delegation of centre-right MEPs from the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee. He warned against any impulse on the part of the EU to impose punitive terms on Britain in the Brexit negotiations.
“A bad-tempered divorce and protracted divorce is in no one’s interest. What is needed now is certainty. In fact, were no deal to emerge it could present a new risk to the fragile and interconnected financial markets that exist in the UK and the EU.”
Financial services
He said it was particularly in Ireland’s interest to ensure that the City of London remained strong after Brexit, and that a mutual beneficial deal was agreed on financial services.
“Putting a wall up around UK financial services will be detrimental to Ireland especially. Over half of Ireland’s exports in financial services to Europe goes directly to the UK every year.
“Ireland has serious opportunities to attract financial services firms in light of Brexit. However, we do not want to see a whole swath of the financial services industry pull out of the UK. We need a strong City of London as both of our financial services centres are interlinked.”
