UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson has told Prime Minister Theresa May that the UK government should not strive to maintain “no border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit, according to local media reports.
The government’s task should rather be to “stop this border becoming significantly harder,” the foreign minister said in a leaked letter to May, as quoted by Sky News broadcaster on Tuesday.
Johnson said that more than 95 percent of all the goods would be able to pass the border without any checks even if a hard border was reinstated.
EU Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said earlier on Tuesday that Northern Ireland should continue to adhere to EU regulations after Brexit to ensure that a hard border does not reappear.
The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is the only land border the United Kingdom will share with the European Union after it quits the bloc. The status of Northern Ireland has been at the heart of the Brexit negotiations.