The EU will risk heightening tensions with the UK on Brexit by publishing five combative position papers in the coming days, including one that places the onus on Britain to solve the problem of the Irish border, according to documents leaked to the Guardian.

The Irish document shows that Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, will call on the UK to work out “solutions” that avoid the creation of a hard border and guarantee peace on the island.

The leaks come a day after the Guardian obtained a draft memo showing the British government’s position on post-Brexit EU migration, which has been denounced as “completely confused”, “economically illiterate” and “a blueprint on how to strangle London’s economy”.

The Ireland paper is one of five due to be published by the European commission in the coming days. Each is dated 6 September and was drawn up by Barnier’s article 50 taskforce in Brussels.



Together, the papers lay bare the complexity of disentangling Britain from the European Union. Each paper is focused on withdrawal day, 29 March 2019, delving into technical minefields not dealt with during the referendum campaign.

EU proposals include:

A demand – likely to inflame Brexiters – for the UK to legislate for the “continued protection” of special foods such as Parma ham and feta cheese, as well as French burgundy and Spanish cava. Brussels wants to ensure that more than 3,300 food and drink products are protected from British copycats after Brexit.



Ensuring that any goods in transit on Brexit day would be subject to the jurisdiction of the European court of justice. In effect, British companies and the British government would be liable to fines from Brussels for breaking EU VAT and customs rules.

A warning to the government that it must guarantee EU data protection standards on classified EU documents. If not, the EU wants these documents erased or destroyed.

Asking Britain not to discriminate against EU companies which are carrying out state-funded infrastructure projects that began before Brexit day.

Taken together, the five papers reinforce the EU’s determination to focus exclusively on the Brexit divorce issues, spurning Brexit secretary David Davis’s offer to be more “flexible and imaginative” and move to trade.

The Irish border is the biggest conundrum caused by the vote to leave the EU, a point underscored by Brussels’ acknowledgment that the Irish document is “different from other papers”.

Brussels intends to say the UK should shoulder responsibility for the border, spelling out that the Brexit vote has caused the problem. “The onus to present solutions which overcome the challenges created on the island of Ireland by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union and its decision to leave the customs union and the internal market remains on the United Kingdom,” states the EU’s Brexit position paper on Ireland.

The Ireland paper, which is to be discussed by EU diplomats on Thursday, heightens the pressure on Davis, whose plans to allow UK officials to manage the border for the EU were rejected as “magical thinking” barely a week after they were published. At the weekend, Davis appeared to ditch this “blue-sky” plan and said a “conventional approach” was more likely, without spelling out further details.



Barnier, who was the European commissioner responsible for setting up EU funds to promote peace after the Good Friday agreement, is also due to set out his thinking on Brexit at a press conference on Thursday.

The paper emerged days after Barnier met Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, in Brussels. Coveney told the EU negotiator that the UK’s decision to leave the EU had “potentially an extraordinarily negative impact on Ireland and on the island of Ireland”.



The commission’s paper states that “there needs to be a political commitment to protecting the Good Friday agreement”, although it does not go as far as EU officials did recently when they warned against using Ireland as a “bargaining chip”.



Irish politicians would prefer the UK to remain in the EU customs union, as the safest way to avoid the border posts that became targets for nationalist paramilitaries during the Troubles. But remaining in the customs union would mean the UK would lose the power to negotiate its own trade deals, a key demand for Brexiters.



As such, Davis hopes the UK can remain in a customs union with the EU but in Brussels his plans are seen as vague or unrealistic.



The latest tranche of documents comes a day after the Guardian published a leaked Home Office report that revealed a possible blueprint for a post-Brexit immigration policy.

Yvette Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, said she would be demanding answers from ministers following the leak because it suggested the government was not prepared to wait and listen to independent advice on the issue.

She argued that the government’s process for developing policy was “completely confused” and asked if any assessment had been made about the relationship between immigration proposals and any trade or single market deal.

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said of the document: “It reads like a blueprint on how to strangle London’s economy, which would be devastating not just for our city but for the whole country.”

The Green party co-leader Caroline Lucas described it as “economically illiterate and cruel”.

The plans had a mixed reception in Brussels. One source said there was anger and real frustration that the UK is going for a “hardcore domestic immigration policy”.

But many did not share this view. One usually outspoken politician, who closely follows Brexit, declined to comment, deeming the issue “a matter for the UK as a third [non-EU] country”. The issue came up at an internal meeting in the European parliament, where “there was a general sense that it was the UK’s sovereign decision to put in place a migration policy”, a source said.