Recag/C4_30 · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Yet progress was being made.
"The issues started to narrow down during the tunnel phase," says a senior diplomatic close to the negotiations.
"The architecture of the backstop, the issue of it being time-limited, and who made the decision to end it – in each of those a way through was found, but one which preserved the integrity of the EU’s position."
But it was slow progress.
Olly Robbins returned on Sunday 11 November. A deal would have to be done this week if there was going to be an emergency summit in November.
"There are still a lot of problematic things across the board, some small some big," said one on Monday morning.
"I don’t have my hopes up for a landing any time soon."
Among the big problematic things were the temporary customs union, and how to end it.
It was now safely inside the draft Irish Protocol as the pre-eminent backstop, from which all other issues on Ireland would flow. Yet, shoe-horning a customs union into a divorce treaty was a vast, complex legal undertaking.
It would also carry strict conditions, because it gave the UK tariff-, quota- and rules of origin-free access to the single market before a free trade agreement was even started.
"The problem is," said one EU source, "that you have to flesh out and negotiate the terms of this in some separate agreement, because there is no way that on the basis of a quick flourish, and simply saying ‘a customs union’ that all those goods are going to be allowed to flood into other member states if they haven’t signed up to EU rules."
Those rules were coming into shape.
The more the UK pushed the temporary customs union idea, the more member states insisted the UK would have to sign up to EU environmental, social, labour, competition and state aid law.
It was also up to London to do the spade-work on how this customs union would function legally.
That threatened to hold up the whole process.
"There’s no deal," said another senior EU official ruefully.
"It’s a mess in London. Brussels is waiting for a piece of paper some time in the second half of the week. There will be nothing tomorrow. I reckon there won’t be anything before Thursday and Friday."
In fact, negotiators were getting there.
By 9pm on Monday, the night of the Barnier-Coveney meeting, Sabine Weyand and Olly Robbins felt they had finally "stabilised" the text as far as they could.
Overnight the text went to London.
Theresa May had a cabinet meeting the next morning, but she did not reveal the news that the text had been stabilised the night before.
In fact, the fact a deal had been done remained a secret until RTÉ News broke the story at 3.55pm Irish time, pushing sterling up to $1.30.
"There is a text," a source told this correspondent around 3.45pm Brussels time, "but the problem now is that the politicians have to look at it."
The breakthrough was confirmed by a second source.
There would be one overall backstop, not two, but with deeper provisions for Northern Ireland on both the customs and the regulatory side.
And there would be no unilateral ending of the backstop: it would have to be agreed jointly by the EU and UK.
Within minutes of the RTÉ report, Downing Street announced a special cabinet meeting for Wednesday afternoon.
Theresa May began to hold one-on-one meetings with her ministers.
Irish officials held their breath, desparate to refrain from any sense of relief at best, or triumphalism at worst.
"She is meeting ministers individually," said one Dublin source, "but we don’t know are we going to see resignations, are we going to see acceptance in the UK.
"We really want to see can the prime minister land this tomorrow, and if she can it will be over to Barnier to do what he is instructed to do. Only then will the Irish government have something solid to say."
So cautious was Dublin that the Department of Foreign Affairs issued a statement late Tuesday aftternoon that "negotiations between the EU and UK on a Withdrawal Agreement are ongoing and have not concluded. Negotiators are still engaged and a number of issues are outstanding. We are not commenting further on leaks in the media."
In fact, the Irish Government had been appraised of the breakthrough the night before and Leo Varadkar had even briefed the Cabinet that a deal had been done on Tuesday morning.
So, when the 585-page draft treaty was published at 8.45pm Brussels time on Wednesday night, what did it say about the backstop?
At first glance, it was clear that a lot of drafting had been done to render the Irish Protocol less offensive to London.
There were numerous references to the constitutional integrity of the UK, and to the backstop being temporary and being superseded when appropriate.
Article 1 made it clear it was "without prejudice to the provisions of the [Good Friday]… Agreement regarding the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the principle of consent," meaning "any change in that status can only be made with the consent of a majority of its people."
The text respected the "territorial integrity of the United Kingdom" and was designed to "address the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, maintain the necessary conditions for continued North-South cooperation, avoid a hard border," and protect the GFA "in all its dimensions".
The objective was not to establish a "permanent relationship" between the EU and UK so the backstop would "apply only temporarily," and its provisions would apply "unless and until they are superseded, in whole or in part, by a subsequent agreement."
As reported on RTÉ the previous afternoon, there was indeed only one backstop – a UK-wide customs arrangement.
Until that future free trade deal came along, there would be "a single customs territory between the [European] Union and the United Kingdom.
Accordingly, Northern Ireland was in the "same customs territory as Great Britain."
This new customs territory would therefore be a combination of the EU’s customs territory, set out in EU law, and the UK’s customs territory.
But there were extremely important caveats to this one backstop.
There would be extra provisions for Northern Ireland so that it remained aligned to the rules of the single market, and while the North would be in the UK’s customs territory, it would be subject to what is called the Union Customs Code, ie the EU’s customs rule book.
A senior EU official explains that the current EU customs union is a combination of a basic customs union and a regulatory union (ie, where harmonised, common rules apply).
"The UK will only be part of the basic customs union, whereas Northern Ireland will be part of the basic customs union and the regulatory union to avoid a hard border," the official said.
So the extra provisions applying to Northern Ireland – but not to the rest of the UK – would include the regulation of industrial goods, the so-called sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules for veterinary controls, rules on the production and marketing of certain agricultural products, VAT and excise, and state aid rules.
For that reason, it is clear that the UK in the negotiations conceded that there would have to be regulatory controls on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, because they would not be subject to the same EU regulations.
Here it seems London has largely accepted the "de-dramatised" controls long advocated by Michel Barnier.
What would then happen to a product being sent from Liverpool to Belfast?
Under the backstop, the "importer" would fill in a transit declaration in Liverpool.
If it was an industrial good there would be a barcode on the container to be scanned either on the ferry or at the transit port (ie, Dublin).
There would be checks at the destination in Northern Ireland, but these checks would not be systematic, in other words, they would only occur if a risk had been identified by the authorities.
The regulatory compliance checks, to ensure goods comply with EU safety standards would be done through "market surveillance authorities", for example consumer organisations that test for the safety of, say, lighters, at the company premises.
It looks like the only checks that would actually happen at ports and airports would be those SPS checks for live animals and animal products.
At present 10% of consignments are checked anyway, but this would rise to 100% in a backstop scenario, but, as mentioned, falling if the EU and UK can conclude a separate bilateral veterinary treaty.
Overall, one way of looking at it is that the EU customs union is a delivery system for the complete range of regulatory checks that come with the single market.
Since most of those rules will still apply in Northern Ireland under the backstop, then the Union Customs Code must also apply.
That, at least, is the legal logic of the treaty, but it will be politically very hard to swallow for the DUP.
Officials close to the negotiations insist that every effort has been made to reassure London and the DUP on two counts: that nothing here is a threat to the constitutional integrity of the UK, and secondly that both sides will make their "best endeavours" to ensure the backstop is not needed.
Part of that is the rendezvous clause which provides for a stocktaking in July 2020.
At that point we will be one year into the transition, and the free trade negotiations will have been under way.
Both sides will assess if that FTA is ready and fit for purpose – to ensure no hard border – and if not there will be two other options: an extension of the transition by an as yet indeterminate period, or the temporary customs backstop, with the extra provisions listed above.
This is intended to address Brexiteer worries that, with the backstop legally binding and in the Withdrawal Agreement, the EU will simply sit back and take their time in negotiating the future free trade deal in good faith.
Despite the carnage in London, both Brussels and Dublin entertain somewhat forlorn hopes that Tory hardliners and the DUP might give the treaty a second glance when the dust settles.
Statements of support from the Ulster Farmers Union and key manufacturing, retail and trade groups in Northern Ireland are raising hopes in Dublin that the DUP may reconsider its hardline stance.
In the meantime, Brussels is holding its breath and limiting its public pronouncements on what has been happening in London.
However, there is no appetite to reopen negotiations.
"There’s clearly an awareness that the situation in London is difficult and unclear," says one EU diplomat, with commendable understatement.
"The EU side are very conscious of the need to tread very carefully on this. No-one wants to distort or play into what is a difficult process in London.
"But at the same time the Withdrawal Agreement has been agreed between the two sets of negotiators, and there is absolutely no appetite to go back to that."
That is why the summit called for on Sunday 25 November will not be a negotiating summit.
It will provide Theresa May with the optics of support and endorsement, in the hope that this will start to turn the tide in favour of the treaty’s ultimate ratification in the House of Commons.
For now, that seems a remote prospect. But no one Tory candidate has put forward a credible alternative.
No Deal is seen as a hopeless option, beyond the most avid Brexiteers, with no Commons majority. Nor is there a majority for a second vote.
And the EU believe they have gone as far as they can.
They have agreed to shoehorn a customs union into a divorce, and next week the Political Declaration will spell out a free trade agreement that will look like no other.
Some EU diplomats, sitting back after 17 months of gruelling negotiation, and spellbinding turmoil in London, wonder how things got to this point.
"All in all," muses a diplomat from one member state, "I think it’s a fair and balanced deal and I really regret that it’s deteriorated into this Byzantine discussion about the backstop.
"No other trade agreement will ever be judged on these terms. Not in a million years."
Police in Australia are investigating suspicious packages sent to at least ten embassies and consulates in Canberra and Melbourne, including those of Britain, the United States and New Zealand.
The British High Commission in Australia confirmed that the consulate in Melbourne had received a package but said nobody was injured. The commission in Canberra was not affected.
Emergency services attended consulates across Melbourne’s central busy district and the inner city. Some reports said as many as 22 consulates had received packages, some of which apparently contained asbestos.
According to Channel Nine, the consulates of Britain, the United States, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Pakistan and Greece were all believed to have been affected. It was not clear which embassies in Canberra were affected.
The Australian Federal Police said it was investigating the source of the packages.
“Police and emergency services have responded to suspicious packages delivered to embassies and consulates in Canberra and Melbourne today,” a police statement said.
The incident follows the discovery two days ago of suspicious white powder at the Argentinian Consulate in Sydney. Authorities confirmed that the powder was not toxic.
The Metropolitan Fire Brigade in Melbourne has sent units to reports of "hazardous material", according to the Vic Emergency website.
A spokeswoman for the service said: "We are assisting the Australian Federal Police right now with a number of incidents across Melbourne."
Pictures posted on social media show cordons outside the Indian and South Korean consulates, both on St Kilda Road in the south of the city.
Our solar system may have a brand new dwarf planet, orbiting in the region beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt.
Called 2014 UZ224, the object is said to be around 330 miles (530km) across and has been spotted around 8.5 billion miles (13.7 billion km) from the Sun.
If confirmed as a dwarf planet, it will join the most famous dwarf planet in our system, Pluto, as well as Eris, Haumea, Ceres and the more recently discovered Makemake. 2014 UZ224 is the third most distant object in our system, behind Eris, and V774104, discovered in October.
Professor David Gerdes from the University of Michigan told NPR that 2014 UZ224 was found using what's known as the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) as part of the Dark Energy Survey (DES).
This camera captures images of the sky at regular intervals and while galaxies stay in a static position, orbiting objects change their position and this was used to discover 2014 UZ224. It then took two years to repeat the findings and confirm its discovery.
2014 UZ224 has a 1,140-year orbit. According to Sky & Telescope, astronomers don't consider it part of the "classical Kuiper Belt" and instead is being referred to as a "scattered disk object" whose orbits has changed "due to encounters with Neptune".
Professor Gerdes has since used the ALMA radio-telescope array to measure heat from 2014 UZ224. This data will be combined with the optical measurements to determine a more accurate size for the object.
The object has been confirmed by the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) Minor Planet Center, but its orbital path is not yet known and Professor Gerdes said the IAU will need to officially classify it once more details are known about its size.
Many will notice a few more construction barrels along Interstate 35W. Overnight, crews closed the MnPASS lane on I-35W northbound from 26th St. into downtown Minneapolis. They also re-striped the lanes just south of the Highway 65 split.

Yet progress was being made.

"The issues started to narrow down during the tunnel phase," says a senior diplomatic close to the negotiations.

"The architecture of the backstop, the issue of it being time-limited, and who made the decision to end it – in each of those a way through was found, but one which preserved the integrity of the EU’s position."

But it was slow progress.

Olly Robbins returned on Sunday 11 November. A deal would have to be done this week if there was going to be an emergency summit in November.

"There are still a lot of problematic things across the board, some small some big," said one on Monday morning.

"I don’t have my hopes up for a landing any time soon."

Among the big problematic things were the temporary customs union, and how to end it.

It was now safely inside the draft Irish Protocol as the pre-eminent backstop, from which all other issues on Ireland would flow. Yet, shoe-horning a customs union into a divorce treaty was a vast, complex legal undertaking.

It would also carry strict conditions, because it gave the UK tariff-, quota- and rules of origin-free access to the single market before a free trade agreement was even started.

"The problem is," said one EU source, "that you have to flesh out and negotiate the terms of this in some separate agreement, because there is no way that on the basis of a quick flourish, and simply saying ‘a customs union’ that all those goods are going to be allowed to flood into other member states if they haven’t signed up to EU rules."

Those rules were coming into shape.

The more the UK pushed the temporary customs union idea, the more member states insisted the UK would have to sign up to EU environmental, social, labour, competition and state aid law.

It was also up to London to do the spade-work on how this customs union would function legally.

That threatened to hold up the whole process.

"There’s no deal," said another senior EU official ruefully.

"It’s a mess in London. Brussels is waiting for a piece of paper some time in the second half of the week. There will be nothing tomorrow. I reckon there won’t be anything before Thursday and Friday."

In fact, negotiators were getting there.

By 9pm on Monday, the night of the Barnier-Coveney meeting, Sabine Weyand and Olly Robbins felt they had finally "stabilised" the text as far as they could.

Overnight the text went to London.

Theresa May had a cabinet meeting the next morning, but she did not reveal the news that the text had been stabilised the night before.

In fact, the fact a deal had been done remained a secret until RTÉ News broke the story at 3.55pm Irish time, pushing sterling up to $1.30.

"There is a text," a source told this correspondent around 3.45pm Brussels time, "but the problem now is that the politicians have to look at it."

The breakthrough was confirmed by a second source.

There would be one overall backstop, not two, but with deeper provisions for Northern Ireland on both the customs and the regulatory side.

And there would be no unilateral ending of the backstop: it would have to be agreed jointly by the EU and UK.

Within minutes of the RTÉ report, Downing Street announced a special cabinet meeting for Wednesday afternoon.

Theresa May began to hold one-on-one meetings with her ministers.

Irish officials held their breath, desparate to refrain from any sense of relief at best, or triumphalism at worst.

"She is meeting ministers individually," said one Dublin source, "but we don’t know are we going to see resignations, are we going to see acceptance in the UK.

"We really want to see can the prime minister land this tomorrow, and if she can it will be over to Barnier to do what he is instructed to do. Only then will the Irish government have something solid to say."

So cautious was Dublin that the Department of Foreign Affairs issued a statement late Tuesday aftternoon that "negotiations between the EU and UK on a Withdrawal Agreement are ongoing and have not concluded. Negotiators are still engaged and a number of issues are outstanding. We are not commenting further on leaks in the media."

In fact, the Irish Government had been appraised of the breakthrough the night before and Leo Varadkar had even briefed the Cabinet that a deal had been done on Tuesday morning.

So, when the 585-page draft treaty was published at 8.45pm Brussels time on Wednesday night, what did it say about the backstop?

At first glance, it was clear that a lot of drafting had been done to render the Irish Protocol less offensive to London.

There were numerous references to the constitutional integrity of the UK, and to the backstop being temporary and being superseded when appropriate.

Article 1 made it clear it was "without prejudice to the provisions of the [Good Friday]… Agreement regarding the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the principle of consent," meaning "any change in that status can only be made with the consent of a majority of its people."

The text respected the "territorial integrity of the United Kingdom" and was designed to "address the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, maintain the necessary conditions for continued North-South cooperation, avoid a hard border," and protect the GFA "in all its dimensions".

The objective was not to establish a "permanent relationship" between the EU and UK so the backstop would "apply only temporarily," and its provisions would apply "unless and until they are superseded, in whole or in part, by a subsequent agreement."

As reported on RTÉ the previous afternoon, there was indeed only one backstop – a UK-wide customs arrangement.

Until that future free trade deal came along, there would be "a single customs territory between the [European] Union and the United Kingdom.

Accordingly, Northern Ireland was in the "same customs territory as Great Britain."

This new customs territory would therefore be a combination of the EU’s customs territory, set out in EU law, and the UK’s customs territory.

But there were extremely important caveats to this one backstop.

There would be extra provisions for Northern Ireland so that it remained aligned to the rules of the single market, and while the North would be in the UK’s customs territory, it would be subject to what is called the Union Customs Code, ie the EU’s customs rule book.

A senior EU official explains that the current EU customs union is a combination of a basic customs union and a regulatory union (ie, where harmonised, common rules apply).

"The UK will only be part of the basic customs union, whereas Northern Ireland will be part of the basic customs union and the regulatory union to avoid a hard border," the official said.

So the extra provisions applying to Northern Ireland – but not to the rest of the UK – would include the regulation of industrial goods, the so-called sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules for veterinary controls, rules on the production and marketing of certain agricultural products, VAT and excise, and state aid rules.

For that reason, it is clear that the UK in the negotiations conceded that there would have to be regulatory controls on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, because they would not be subject to the same EU regulations.

Here it seems London has largely accepted the "de-dramatised" controls long advocated by Michel Barnier.

What would then happen to a product being sent from Liverpool to Belfast?

Under the backstop, the "importer" would fill in a transit declaration in Liverpool.

If it was an industrial good there would be a barcode on the container to be scanned either on the ferry or at the transit port (ie, Dublin).

There would be checks at the destination in Northern Ireland, but these checks would not be systematic, in other words, they would only occur if a risk had been identified by the authorities.

The regulatory compliance checks, to ensure goods comply with EU safety standards would be done through "market surveillance authorities", for example consumer organisations that test for the safety of, say, lighters, at the company premises.

It looks like the only checks that would actually happen at ports and airports would be those SPS checks for live animals and animal products.

At present 10% of consignments are checked anyway, but this would rise to 100% in a backstop scenario, but, as mentioned, falling if the EU and UK can conclude a separate bilateral veterinary treaty.

Overall, one way of looking at it is that the EU customs union is a delivery system for the complete range of regulatory checks that come with the single market.

Since most of those rules will still apply in Northern Ireland under the backstop, then the Union Customs Code must also apply.

That, at least, is the legal logic of the treaty, but it will be politically very hard to swallow for the DUP.

Officials close to the negotiations insist that every effort has been made to reassure London and the DUP on two counts: that nothing here is a threat to the constitutional integrity of the UK, and secondly that both sides will make their "best endeavours" to ensure the backstop is not needed.

Part of that is the rendezvous clause which provides for a stocktaking in July 2020.

At that point we will be one year into the transition, and the free trade negotiations will have been under way.

Both sides will assess if that FTA is ready and fit for purpose – to ensure no hard border – and if not there will be two other options: an extension of the transition by an as yet indeterminate period, or the temporary customs backstop, with the extra provisions listed above.

This is intended to address Brexiteer worries that, with the backstop legally binding and in the Withdrawal Agreement, the EU will simply sit back and take their time in negotiating the future free trade deal in good faith.

Despite the carnage in London, both Brussels and Dublin entertain somewhat forlorn hopes that Tory hardliners and the DUP might give the treaty a second glance when the dust settles.

Statements of support from the Ulster Farmers Union and key manufacturing, retail and trade groups in Northern Ireland are raising hopes in Dublin that the DUP may reconsider its hardline stance.

In the meantime, Brussels is holding its breath and limiting its public pronouncements on what has been happening in London.

However, there is no appetite to reopen negotiations.

"There’s clearly an awareness that the situation in London is difficult and unclear," says one EU diplomat, with commendable understatement.

"The EU side are very conscious of the need to tread very carefully on this. No-one wants to distort or play into what is a difficult process in London.

"But at the same time the Withdrawal Agreement has been agreed between the two sets of negotiators, and there is absolutely no appetite to go back to that."

That is why the summit called for on Sunday 25 November will not be a negotiating summit.

It will provide Theresa May with the optics of support and endorsement, in the hope that this will start to turn the tide in favour of the treaty’s ultimate ratification in the House of Commons.

For now, that seems a remote prospect. But no one Tory candidate has put forward a credible alternative.

No Deal is seen as a hopeless option, beyond the most avid Brexiteers, with no Commons majority. Nor is there a majority for a second vote.

And the EU believe they have gone as far as they can.

They have agreed to shoehorn a customs union into a divorce, and next week the Political Declaration will spell out a free trade agreement that will look like no other.

Some EU diplomats, sitting back after 17 months of gruelling negotiation, and spellbinding turmoil in London, wonder how things got to this point.

"All in all," muses a diplomat from one member state, "I think it’s a fair and balanced deal and I really regret that it’s deteriorated into this Byzantine discussion about the backstop.

"No other trade agreement will ever be judged on these terms. Not in a million years."

Police in Australia are investigating suspicious packages sent to at least ten embassies and consulates in Canberra and Melbourne, including those of Britain, the United States and New Zealand.

The British High Commission in Australia confirmed that the consulate in Melbourne had received a package but said nobody was injured. The commission in Canberra was not affected.

Emergency services attended consulates across Melbourne’s central busy district and the inner city. Some reports said as many as 22 consulates had received packages, some of which apparently contained asbestos.

According to Channel Nine, the consulates of Britain, the United States, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Pakistan and Greece were all believed to have been affected. It was not clear which embassies in Canberra were affected.

The Australian Federal Police said it was investigating the source of the packages.

“Police and emergency services have responded to suspicious packages delivered to embassies and consulates in Canberra and Melbourne today,” a police statement said.

The incident follows the discovery two days ago of suspicious white powder at the Argentinian Consulate in Sydney. Authorities confirmed that the powder was not toxic.

The Metropolitan Fire Brigade in Melbourne has sent units to reports of "hazardous material", according to the Vic Emergency website.

A spokeswoman for the service said: "We are assisting the Australian Federal Police right now with a number of incidents across Melbourne."

Pictures posted on social media show cordons outside the Indian and South Korean consulates, both on St Kilda Road in the south of the city.

Our solar system may have a brand new dwarf planet, orbiting in the region beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt.

Called 2014 UZ224, the object is said to be around 330 miles (530km) across and has been spotted around 8.5 billion miles (13.7 billion km) from the Sun.

If confirmed as a dwarf planet, it will join the most famous dwarf planet in our system, Pluto, as well as Eris, Haumea, Ceres and the more recently discovered Makemake. 2014 UZ224 is the third most distant object in our system, behind Eris, and V774104, discovered in October.

Professor David Gerdes from the University of Michigan told NPR that 2014 UZ224 was found using what's known as the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) as part of the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

This camera captures images of the sky at regular intervals and while galaxies stay in a static position, orbiting objects change their position and this was used to discover 2014 UZ224. It then took two years to repeat the findings and confirm its discovery.

2014 UZ224 has a 1,140-year orbit. According to Sky & Telescope, astronomers don't consider it part of the "classical Kuiper Belt" and instead is being referred to as a "scattered disk object" whose orbits has changed "due to encounters with Neptune".

Professor Gerdes has since used the ALMA radio-telescope array to measure heat from 2014 UZ224. This data will be combined with the optical measurements to determine a more accurate size for the object.

The object has been confirmed by the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) Minor Planet Center, but its orbital path is not yet known and Professor Gerdes said the IAU will need to officially classify it once more details are known about its size.

Many will notice a few more construction barrels along Interstate 35W. Overnight, crews closed the MnPASS lane on I-35W northbound from 26th St. into downtown Minneapolis. They also re-striped the lanes just south of the Highway 65 split.