Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar is a former general practitioner and health minister for the country | Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images | Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images New Irish PM: No economic border with Northern Ireland Leo Varadkar says he has a ‘clear…simple’ objective in Brexit talks.

Ireland's new prime minister, Leo Varadkar, said he wanted continued economic ties between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit as he attended his first European Council meeting in Brussels Thursday.

“Our objective is a very clear one, and it’s a very simple one: that there should not be an economic border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland,” he said.

Avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has emerged as perhaps the biggest challenge facing negotiators in the early phases of the Brexit talks.

On the first day of talks, on Monday, it was decided that the highest-ranking officials from both sides — Oliver Robbins and Sabine Weyand — would oversee the issue — a signal of how seriously the U.K. and the EU take the matter.

Discussions on Northern Ireland, the only part of the U.K. to have a land border with the EU, will over the summer focus on technical solutions to the question of how can a hard border — with customs, regulatory standards and immigration checks — be avoided when the U.K. wants to leave not only the EU but its customs union and single market.

“I don’t think anyone can be sure about the outcome of Brexit,” Varadkar said. “It’s not something that can be solely determined by us.”

Varadkar was earlier this month formally elected as Ireland’s new prime minister, replacing Enda Kenny. At 38 years of age, Varadkar — the son of an Irish nurse and a doctor from India — is the youngest prime minister since independence from Britain in 1922.