Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Ireland would not accept an economic border with Northern Ireland after Brexit and urged Britain to come up with alternatives in an unusually blunt statement. "As far as this government is concerned there shouldn't be an economic border. We don't want one," said Varadkar, who came to power last month. He warned Ireland would not "design a border for the Brexiteers" and said that the onus was on Britain to come up with proposals since it had created the problem by voting to leave the European Union.
"It's Britain that has decided to leave and if they want to put forward smart solutions, technological solutions for borders of the future and all of that that's up to them," he told Irish media. Some British ministers have suggested the installation of an "smart" and "invisible" border including cameras and pre-registration checks for trucks carrying goods.
"What we're not going to do is to design a border for the Brexiteers because they're the ones who want a border," Varadkar said. The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is currently open as both countries are in the EU, with a free flow of goods and tens of thousands of people crossing it every day to work on the other side.
The Irish border issue is one of three key Brexit problems - along with the divorce bill and the status of EU nationals living in Britain - that Brussels and London have to resolve before moving on to negotiations about future trade ties. Varadkar said that an economic border no longer existed in practice and he was keen to keep it that way. "We're not going to be helping them to design some sort of border that we don't believe should exist in the first place," he said.
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