Mr. Guy Verhofstadt:

It is a question of how many minutes I will be given to respond to all the remarks that have been made. I thank the honourable Members and the Chairs of the committees. Maybe I can pick three elements from the various interventions that have been made. Reference was made to the state of the negotiations and I was asked whether we will use our veto. One needs to have something to veto before one can use one's veto. For the moment, there is nothing to veto because - let us be honest - no real progress has been made in the negotiations. We have had three rounds of negotiations. The first round involved the formal start of negotiations, the second round involved the presentation and the third round involved the clarification. I think it is time for the negotiation in the fourth and fifth rounds. That is what we are hoping for now. Maybe the intervention of the British Prime Minister will lead to a breakthrough in the coming days. Based on the state of play now, those of us on the European Parliament side do not see sufficient progress to call for the so-called "second stage" of the negotiations on the future relationship between the UK and the EU. The sequencing is important because Article 50 of the treaty says that there needs to be an agreement on withdrawal in the first instance before a new relationship can start to be established between the EU and the withdrawing country. Let us be very blunt about it - the first three rounds were very slow. We hope the fourth and fifth rounds in October can speed up the negotiations. It is time for the uncertainty to stop, in the interests of everybody, particularly businesses and citizens. This uncertainty is having a negative impact on the hearts and minds of citizens and on daily economic life. The only way to stop it is to go forward in the negotiations.

The second point I want to make relates to the Good Friday Agreement. The European Parliament has made it very clear from day one - it pushed this in the guidelines of the European Council - that the wording of the Good Friday Agreement should be included in all its parts. This has been a request from the European Parliament. Keeping the integrity of the Good Friday Agreement is a key element for us. We cannot risk the possibility of Brexit creating a return to the Troubles that we saw in the past. That is a key element for this whole negotiation. I found that this point - the risk to the Good Friday Agreement posed by the Brexit discussion - was not touched on sufficiently during the whole debate before the referendum in Britain. I accept that this is in the past now. Ireland can count on the European Parliament to defend the integrity of the Good Friday Agreement in all its parts. We will never allow whatever solution is reached to put that in danger. As the EU played an important role in the Good Friday Agreement, it is keen to defend its own work and its own achievements.

The third issue is the solution for Northern Ireland. As I said earlier, I have heard many solutions for Northern Ireland already. It has been suggested that an economic zone could be created, or that the Single Market and the customs union could continue to be extended to Northern Ireland. All of these solutions are possible. As the European Parliament will express in its next resolution, however, the position paper that the British Government has put on the table is not possible because it says that there should be a return to a border and that it will be made invisible. I have always thought that if a border is not visible, it is no border. If a border is visible, it is a border. It is not only with a number of technical features that the problem can be solved. We are in favour of any solution that avoids in any way a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. That is going to be our goal. As I indicated in my intervention yesterday, the main proposal for avoiding a hard border that I have heard involves Northern Ireland continuing to participate in the Single Market and the customs union.