Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the question. I completely agree with her in the last sentence of her statement about a more democratic and better European Union for everybody. In the context of this deal, I have been very careful not to endorse party political positions in the context of UK politics when it comes to Brexit. Our role has been to negotiate through our chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, with the British Government and with whoever the British Prime Minister happens to be at the time to get the best deal possible to protect Irish interests. That has been our focus and the outcome today reflects that.

The main change in the political declaration that the Deputy referred to is to the future EU-UK economic relationship, where the current UK Government has opted for a model based on a free trade agreement, FTA, which is not what Mr. Corbyn would like, but that is what Prime Minister Johnson has advocated. The political declaration provides for an ambitious FTA with zero tariffs and quotas between the EU and UK. It states that robust commitments on a level playing field should ensure open and fair competition. That is a must for the European Union. The precise nature of the commitments will be commensurate with the ambition of the future relationship and take into account the economic connectedness and geographic proximity of the UK. What that means in simple terms is that if we are going to have a close trading relationship facilitated by an FTA in the future, which has no tariffs and has no quotas applied, which I certainly hope will be the case, then the EU will insist on this being a level playing field as to how those goods are produced and the standard around that. These relate to some of the issues the Deputy has referred to. Otherwise, it is not fair trade as regards competition or equivalence, if one wants to call it that, which is the term often used.

There are two documents today that are going to be agreed between the British Government and the European Council. One is the withdrawal agreement, which is the legal text of a future international treaty, and which I referred to earlier when raised by Deputy Calleary. The second is a political declaration, which is like a political signal of intent for the kind of relationship that the UK is seeking from the EU in the future with some of the conditions around how that might be managed.

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