To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report by Lars Karlsson for the European Parliament Smart Border 2.0 Avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland for customs control and the free movement of persons, published November 2017.
Answered on
16 July 2018
The report shows a misunderstanding of the Northern Ireland and Ireland context and proposes a fundamental redesign of the Common Travel Area (CTA), which neither the UK, Ireland or the EU have ever envisaged.
Whilst there are some parallels with the work we are developing on the wider UK-EU border model that would apply, for example, to the border between Dover and Calais, this report proposes a form of hard border, albeit an efficiently managed one, for the Northern Ireland-Ireland land border and is therefore fundamentally inconsistent with Government policy and the commitments we have made.
It is unacceptable to suggest any solutions which would require physical infrastructure at the border. Both the UK Government and Irish Government have explicitly ruled this out, as the removal of physical checks and security installations has been a key dividend of the peace process.