The UK government released a document titled Technical note: temporary customs arrangement on Brexit today. That’s is the so-called backstop plan to avoid a hard Irish border if the UK cannot come to an agreement with EU on the issue. Here is a summary for the key points.
It’s in the document that “the UK expects the future arrangement to be in place by the end of December 2021 at the latest”. In other words, the transition arrangement could last a year longer than previously planned. The current agreed 21-month transition period will start from March 29, 2019 and end on December 31, 2020.
During the period, UK will be outside the Common Commercial Policy. That is, “the UK able to negotiate, sign and ratify free trade agreements (FTAs) with rest of world partners and implement those elements that do not affect the functioning of the temporary customs arrangement.”
The backstop solution will cover the whole of UK, not just North Ireland. And, there would be an ongoing role for European Court of Justice during the period. The document added that “if as part of the future partnership, parliament passes an identical law to an EU law, it may make sense for UK courts to look at the appropriate ECJ judgments.”
Here is the full document.
