Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street in London, Britain, January 8, 2020. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
January 13, 2020
BELFAST (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday said he was confident that he could secure a zero-tariff, zero-quota trade deal with the European Union, which would ensure no checks on goods being moved from Britain to Northern Ireland.
Johnson was speaking to journalists in Northern Ireland, a British region that has agreed to maintain alignment with EU market rules under Britain’s EU exit deal in order to avoid a hard border with EU member Ireland.
“The only circumstances in which you could imagine the need for checks coming from GB (Great Britain) to NI (Northern Ireland) … is if those goods were going on into Ireland and we had not secured – which I hope and I am confident we will – a zero-tariff and zero-quota agreement with our friends and partners in the EU,” Johnson said.
(Reporting by Ian Graham. Writing by Conor Humphries. Editing by Andrew MacAskill)
