The European Union wants a strong signal from the U.K. that it’s prepared to engage with the Irish border issue before allowing Brexit talks to move on, according to a diplomat familiar with the bloc’s thinking.
The intractable issue of what happens to the Irish border after Brexit was temporarily fixed in December. But when the EU started translating a political pledge into the legal language of a treaty, the contradictions of the December fix were clearer than ever. Now both sides are back to where they were last year, trying to square the U.K.’s desire to ditch the EU’s rule book with the aim of avoiding a hard border on the divided island.