President of the European Council Donald Tusk has said it will not give up on a workable solution to the Irish border backstop. He was speaking after meeting Taoiseach Leo Varadkar who was in Brussels to hold meetings with key EU figures on finding a resolution to the Irish border backstop intensifies. The engagements come two weeks ahead of the crunch European Council summit in Brussels and amid ongoing uncertainty over whether a Brexit deal can be struck. Sorry, this content isn't available on your device. The impasse over the Irish border remains a key sticking point, with the EU and UK unable to find common ground on the shape of a legally binding 'backstop' position that would ensure free movement across the frontier, even if a wider trade deal failed to materialise. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister said that she will not break up the United Kingdom in order to get a deal with the EU on Brexit. Speaking to her party conference in Birmingham, Theresa May acknowledged leaving without a deal would be a bad outcome, but one she believes the UK could weather. Speaking to the media after meeting the Irish premier on Thursday, President Tusk took the opportunity to hit out at UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt comparing the European Union to the USSR. “Comparing the EU to the Soviet Union is as unwise as it is insulting,” he said. "The Soviet Union was about prisons and gulags, borders and walls, violence against citizens and neighbours. "The European Union is about freedom and human rights, prosperity and peace, life without fear, it is about democracy and pluralism - a continent without internal borders and walls. "As the President of the European Council and someone who spent half his life in the Soviet bloc, I know what I am talking about." He also spoke to reaffirm his commitment to Ireland, which will remain a member state, and to the Irish peace process. “The EU is united behind Ireland and the need to preserve the Northern Ireland peace process,” he said. Despite the UK government's rejection of the original EU backstop proposal, we will not give up seeking a workable solution that fully respects the Good Friday Agreement as well as the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union.” – Donald Tusk, President of the European Council Taoiseach Leo Varadkar highlighted the urgency for serious work to be done as they enter “a critical and penultimate phase” in the next few weeks amid the threat of a no-deal Brexit. He said: “Ireland’s position and Ireland’s objectives is as they were at the very start, essentially we want to achieve four things, all aimed at minimising the damage that Brexit will do to our country; and those four things are protecting the common travel area; making sure that a hard border will not emerge between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; protecting the rights of citizens of Northern Ireland who will continue to be Irish and therefore European citizens even after Brexit and also as well as that ensuring that we have a trading relationship with the United Kingdom after Brexit that is as close as possible. “So all of those things are Ireland’s objectives and we’ll continue to press them as we go forward into the final phase of these talks. I want to very much agree with President Tusk in his call to get down to business, I'm very keen to see an agreement concluded by November, if at all possible. I think that’s in the interests of Ireland, the European Union and the UK and I think we all really need to get down to business over the next few weeks and make that possible.” Mr Varadkar has also been meeting with the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and the chair of the European Parliament's Brexit Steering Group, Guy Verhofstadt. Sorry, this content isn't available on your device.
Donald Tusk has announced that he is determined to find a "workable solution" to the Irish border question after meeting the Republic of Ireland's taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in Brussels. The president of the European Council said that officials would continue to search for a compromise on the issue, despite the UK government's rejection of the bloc's original customs backstop offer. The issue remains the largest impediment to an agreement on the terms of Brexit, with the impasse fuelling speculation that the UK could crash out of the EU without a deal in March 2019.