US President Joe Biden will warn British Prime Minister Boris Johnson against reneging on the Brexit deal when they meet for the first time at the G7 summit this week, The Times reported, citing anonymous sources.
Maintaining the delicate peace of Northern Ireland without allowing the UK a back gateway to EU markets across the 500km Irish land border has been one of the toughest issues in a Brexit divorce.
The EU and Britain have tried to solve the border conundrum with the Northern Ireland Protocol to the Brexit agreement, which maintains the boycott in both the UK’s customs area and the EU’s single market.
But unionists say it goes against the Good Friday agreement and London has said the protocol is unsustainable in its current form after supplies of daily goods to Northern Ireland were disrupted.
President Biden, who is proud of his Irish heritage, will use a meeting with Mr Johnson on Thursday to openly express US support for the protocol.
The newspaper said he would also warn that the prospects for a US trade deal with the UK would be hurt if the situation remained unresolved.
Mr Biden will make clear to the EU that he is expected to stop being a «bureaucrat» and adopt a more flexible approach to implementing the agreement, the newspaper said.
David Frost, Britain’s Brexit negotiator, is seeking to resolve issues related to the Brexit deal, but the situation on the ground in terms of trade is «extremely difficult», government minister Lucy Fraser, in her capacity as Solicitor General for England and Wales, told Sky News. .