EU exit won't ax access, Brits say

From Ireland, free travel will remain

Ireland's Foreign Affairs Minister, Simon Coveney, speaks to the media, at Iveagh House in Dublin, in response to the UK Government's Brexit proposals, Wednesday Aug. 16, 2017.
Ireland's Foreign Affairs Minister, Simon Coveney, speaks to the media, at Iveagh House in Dublin, in response to the UK Government's Brexit proposals, Wednesday Aug. 16, 2017.

LONDON -- There must be no border posts between the United Kingdom and Ireland after the United Kingdom exits the European Union, and the bloc's citizens will be able to enter Britain through EU member state Ireland without immigration checks, the British government said Wednesday.

Britain has vowed to end the free movement of people from the bloc after it leaves the EU in 2019, removing the automatic right of EU citizens to settle and work in the U.K.

But it made clear on Wednesday that EU citizens still will be able to travel freely from EU-member Ireland to Northern Ireland and onward to other parts of the U.K.

Outlining proposals for the Ireland-Northern Ireland border -- one of the most complex aspects of the divorce plans -- the government said there should be no physical border posts or electronic checks. It also committed itself to maintaining the border-free Common Travel Area covering the U.K. and Ireland, which predates the establishment of the EU.

"There should be no physical border infrastructure of any kind on either side of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland," Conservative British Prime Minister Theresa May said.

The right of EU citizens to live in any member state is one of the EU's key principles, one that has allowed hundreds of thousands of Europeans to move to Britain and get jobs there, especially since the bloc expanded into eastern Europe more than a decade ago.

There are an estimated 3 million EU citizens living in Britain, and 1 million Britons residing in other parts of the bloc.

Many Britons who voted last year to leave the EU cited a desire to regain control of immigration as a key reason.

In a paper outlining proposals for the Irish border after U.K.'s exit, the British government insisted that it will be able to control immigration through work permits or other measures.

It said "immigration controls are not, and never have been, solely about the ability to prevent and control entry at the U.K.'s physical border." Control of access to the labor market and social welfare are also "an integral part" of the immigration system, the paper added.

Northern Ireland is an especially thorny issue in the talks because it has the U.K.'s only land border with the EU and because an open border has helped build the economic prosperity that underpins the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Since the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, British military checkpoints along the border have been dismantled, rendering it all but invisible. Thousands of people cross the 300-mile border every day.

Britain said it was determined that "nothing agreed as part of the U.K.'s exit in any way undermines" the Northern Ireland peace agreement.

The government's Department for Exiting the European Union acknowledged that "unprecedented" solutions would be needed to preserve the peace process and maintain the benefits of an open border after Britain leaves the EU, its single market in goods and services and its tariff-free customs union.

It suggested a future "customs partnership" between Britain and the EU could eliminate the need for checks on goods crossing the border.

For agricultural and food products, Britain said one option could be "regulatory equivalence," whereby the U.K. and EU agree to maintain the same standards. But it's unclear what that would mean for Britain's ability to trade with countries that do not always meet EU standards, such as the United States.

The Northern Ireland proposals came in a series of papers covering aspects of the exit talks, which are to resume in Brussels at the end of this month.

Information for this article was contributed by Lorne Cook of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/17/2017

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