Dr. Anthony Soares:

The Centre for Cross Border Studies has noted a change in mood even within the European Commission itself in the past couple of months. We have a working relationship with parts of the European Commission and initially the voices from the Commission were emphasising the level of sympathy they had for the situation North and South in terms of the Border and the Good Friday Agreement and referring to the fact there are non-EU member states involved in INTERREG programmes and all sorts of European territorial co-operation programmes. Now they are no longer saying that and the indications are that Northern Ireland will be out of the EU, will not be eligible and therefore Ireland will not eligible because the only border we have is with the UK. The mood has changed. We were also involved in a network with European partners - Germans, Italians and French - where there is enormous sympathy for us. For example I was in Germany a few months ago - shortly after the referendum result - speaking to business leaders and when talking to them about the argument that German manufacturers, German industry needed the UK market more than the UK manufacturers needed the German market, they just started laughing. Their attitude is yes the UK market is important but we have the ability, the flexibility to change direction. One can see that in terms of exports performance. One can compare the UK and the German export performance in terms of sales to China. One of the priorities of the UK market is exploiting the Chinese market and saying that leaving the EU would make that easier. However, Germany, which is inside the European Union, outperforms by far the UK in terms of exports to China. From the German perspective that argument by the UK was not seen as feasible.