Why Does Brexit Threaten Peace in Ireland ?
By: Peter Lang
Tags: European Union, Peacebuilding, Ireland, Brexit

The Irish question is at the heart of Brexit. It highlights well the question of the European Union’s contribution to peace. On this subject, two schools of thought clash.

On the one hand, the Eurosceptics argue that there is no connection between peace in Ireland and European integration. They point out that the 2008 Good Friday Agreement is a classical bilateral agreement which was not signed under the auspices of the EU. Among them, the Europhobes go even further. They claim that it is Brussels’ current intransigence in the Brexit negotiations that is at the root of the belligerent destabilisation in Ireland.

On the other hand, the Europeanists say that it is thanks to the EU that peace prevails in Ireland. In support of their point of view, they cite the many official EU statements on this issue and recall the names of the major European development programmes.

However, these two very opposite conceptions are not convincing. European integration has indeed contributed to peace, but that idealistic stereotypes of the Europeanists such as “Europe is peace” should be avoided. It is also important to avoid making it appear that large official statements full of benevolent messages really do influence the situation on the ground. Moreover, the importance of development and peace aid programmes, even if they are well endowed, must be put into perspective.

So, I’m trying to show how, in practical terms, the membership of countries in the EU contributes to peace. The key lies in the ability of the European construction to maintain political borders and avoid wars linked to nationalist claims, while at the same time allowing populations sometimes stuck against their will in a state not to feel the effect of the border too much.

The case of Northern Ireland provides a very relevant case study of this theory. Why ? Because althouth Catholic Irish were unhappy for not having had the right to join the Republic of Ireland (Eire), their frustration was mitigated by the lifting of controls at the borders between the two Ireland. This was only possible because both Eire and the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland) belong to the European Union.

Thanks to this membership, it was not necessary to maintain a physical presence between the two Ireland (Eire and Ulster) in order to control customs, fiscal and technical barriers since they have disappeared thanks to the Customs Union and the Single Market of the EU.

It should be noted, however, that, unlike a common and widespread error, the absence of a physical barrier aimed at protecting security is not due to the fact that these two states belong to the EU but to a bilateral agreement between Eire and the UK.

The European Union has therefore made a substantial contribution to peace in Ireland and to the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement by making it possible to avoid border controls between the two countries.

Conversely, a hard Brexit means the exit of Northern Ireland from the EU since it is part of the United Kingdom. And it necessarily implies the end of the Good Friday Agreement because there will be the reinstatement of customs, fiscal and technical controls at border crossings between the two Ireland.

It is unrealistic to think that technical means at the border could replace this physical presence as cameras and other devices could easily be destroyed.

Controls at the border would have to be manned by customs officials, but these would not go there unless they were protected by police and the police could not operate without British Army protection.

A « soft Brexit » is also a source of international destabilisation because it has the opposite effect of frustrating Protestants in Northern Ireland by economically fixing them in the European Union; which takes them away them from their British homeland.

Indeed, the main « soft Brexit » project is the one negotiated in November 2018 between Teresa May’s government and the European Union. This « deal » provides for backstops that must be applied permanently if no satisfactory solution for the EU and UK is found after UK’s exit from the EU.

In practice, the main backstops guarantee that Northern Ireland will remain in the EU Customs Union and in the EU Internal Market of the European Union, even though Northern Ireland will have left the European Union as a result of its membership of the United Kingdom.

As a result, customs, fiscal and technical controls at the borders between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom could continue indefinitely. It would also be a huge destabilising factor in the region that could eventually revive tensions between Northern Irish people, due to the frustrations of Protestants observing de facto attachment of Catholics to the Eire.

Thus, whether Brexit is hard or soft, it is a factor of tension and is even likely to revive deadly conflicts in Ireland.

On the other hand, keeping the United Kingdom in the European Union makes it clear how much European construction contributed to peace in Ireland. The Europeanists would do much more to develop this type of argumentation than to go back to their idealistic clichés.