Taoiseach Leo Varadkar speaks to the media outside the Stormont Hotel on January 12.
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Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Thursday that there was no breakthrough yet on Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trade rules, but expressed hope that a deal was nearby.
“We’re not there yet. I hope we get there,” Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Varadkar told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“I feel the prime minister is definitely [Rishi] Sunak and the UK government look like very serious about reaching an agreement and settling this issue. And I feel there’s more flexibility on the side of the European Union, which incorporates Ireland, to come back to an agreement.”
Varadkar noted other issues that need attention: “The Protocol is necessary, but there is a war occurring in Ukraine, a global recession, an energy crisis, inflation, and Europe and the UK must work together.”
He added that “any obstacles to further cooperation that we will remove are, I think, in everyone’s interest.”
His comments come shortly after Irish Finance Minister Michael McGrath spoke of rising optimism and “welcome signs of progress” in negotiations between the UK and the European Union.
“The talks are ongoing and there appears to be a higher mood overall, there are more positive discussions between the EU and the UK,” McGrath told CNBC’s Joumann Bercetche.
“I feel it’s in everyone’s interest to achieve a negotiated deal quickly so we will have free trade across the Irish Sea, between Britain and Ireland – Northern and Southern – and protect the Good Friday Agreement and peace,” he said.
The UK and the European Union on Monday agreed to work in “spirit of constructiveness and cooperationto resolve the post-Brexit trade dispute over Northern Ireland.
“Either side discussed the range of existing challenges over the past two years and the need to seek out solutions together,” European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly wrote in a joint statement.
This comes after months of talks to finish a bitter political dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol, a part of a post-Brexit trade deal that requires controls on certain goods entering Northern Ireland from the remainder of the UK
Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government collapsed almost a yr ago when the Democratic Unionist Party resigned in protest at an efficient Irish Sea border.
Varadkar he said last week he expressed his hope that an agreement could possibly be reached on the protocol and repairing relations with Northern Ireland’s political parties. Nonetheless, he said the deal wouldn’t necessarily result in the return of executive power to Northern Ireland.
— Matt Clinch of CNBC contributed to this report.