Dr. Anthony Soares:

I thank the committee for this invitation. With regard to the Good Friday Agreement, we have been working on the Brexit issue for some considerable time and from the outset we said that Brexit does not necessarily represent an existential threat to the letter of the Good Friday Agreement, including strand two. It is the spirit of strand two, however, that is potentially at risk from the UK's withdrawal from the EU. This will then affect the ability of Northern Ireland to access to EU funds that support co-operation. Post-Brexit, it is important that strand two of the Good Friday Agreement survives, not simply in terms of the institutions themselves. We said from the outset that the North-South Ministerial Council, for example, was not under threat from Brexit, because it can continue to operate, but that the spirit of strand two lives through communities and their ability to co-operate, especially in the Border counties themselves. The architecture of the Good Friday Agreement in strand two will become a fossil unless there is that ability to co-operate between communities. When I say communities I am talking, not just about community organisations, but also small businesses and their ability to trade across the Border.

As Ms Taillon said, our written statement was presented in March. Since then the European Council and the European Commission have issued a series of directives and guidelines on the upcoming negotiations, and we have to focus on some of the positive language there. I am not saying that the European Commission or any of the European institutions were necessarily taking directions from the Centre for Cross-Border Studies, but I would like to point out that in the discussions around a special status for Northern Ireland, we were quite clear from the outset that the language used was perhaps not helpful, and we should be talking instead about creative, imaginative and flexible solutions. This is precisely the language now used about the negotiations in the European Parliament resolution of April. The Council guidelines also refer to creativity, imagination and flexibility for our particular Border, and the European Commission directors repeat this language. What we have to focus on, perhaps, are those creative, imaginative and flexible solutions that will enable communities along the Border to carry on co-operating and relating to communities on the other side of the Border and not to retrench and look inwards.