Downing Street’s stance on the Irish border is under severe pressure with EU diplomats telling Theresa May she must back down over Northern Ireland’s place in the customs union and MPs warning that hopes of a technological solution to a hard border are unrealistic.

Ahead of three days of talks on the issue this weekend, EU officials said the British government would have to reconsider the possibility of Northern Ireland effectively staying in the customs union and single market, a position it has previously rejected.

The warning was echoed by the Northern Ireland affairs committee in Westminster, which published a report saying there was no evidence that a hi-tech alternative to a fortified border could be made to work in the time available.

Two years ago the then Northern Ireland secretary, James Brokenshire, told the Guardian that goods and services could be allowed to flow freely across the Irish border by using hi-tech checks at crossing points similar to toll booths.

This year the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, repeated this suggestion, saying the crossing the border would be as frictionless as travelling between two London boroughs.



But the members of the Northern Ireland affairs committee, comprising Conservative, Labour and Democratic Unionist (DUP) MPs, said the government had so far failed to find any technical means to avoid a hard border with customs checks, and there was “no evidence to suggest that right now an invisible border is possible”.

They wrote: “The UK government has repeatedly underlined that the free movement of people across the border will not be affected and that no physical infrastructure will be put in place. However, the committee was unable to identify any border solution currently in operation across the globe that would enable physical infrastructure to be avoided when rules and tariffs diverge.”



EU diplomats agreed at a meeting on Thursday that May needs to soften her stance on the “backstop” solution for avoiding a hard border if the EU is to agree on terms for the transition period and start discussing trade at a European council summit next week.

Without agreement at the summit, the next point at which leaders would focus on the issue would be in June, creating huge time pressure on wider negotiations, EU sources said. Without agreement “then we are heading closer to the UK crashing out”, one diplomat said.

Hopes are high that an agreement can be struck this time around, with diplomats seeing signs that the UK is willing to concede over previous sticking points on the draft withdrawal agreement, including on the status of people arriving during the 21 months of the transition period. “They are desperate for their implementation period,” one diplomat said.

The EU is not insisting May accepts the withdrawal agreement’s protocol on Northern Ireland in its entirety, given the political bind she is in with the DUP, whose 10 MPs provide her with a working majority in the Commons.

Brussels remains open to working on the two other options: a trade deal or bespoke technological solution that will be as effective in avoiding border infrastructure – notwithstanding the British report on the plausibility of a hi-tech option.

However, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, told diplomats for the bloc that Ireland needed to see sufficient movement towards acknowledging that the “backstop” is a faithful translation of the December agreement in which the UK accepted that full regulatory alignment was an option.

The EU published its draft withdrawal agreement on Thursday with barely any changes to the protocol on Northern Ireland.

Talks between EU and UK officials will take place on Friday and through the weekend.The Brexit secretary, David Davis, is due to visit Brussels on Sunday and it is hoped he will sign off on an agreed formulation of words to allow for a successful European council summit.

As well as playing down the prospects of a hi-tech alternative to a hard border, the British MPs’ report rejected Irish government suggestions that there could be a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK after Brexit.

They called for the government to publish “detailed proposals, without any further delay” on an “open and invisible border”. The pro-EU pressure group Open Britain said the report should “mark the end of ministerial flights of fancy” over the Irish border.

The Labour MP Stephen Doughty, a supporter of the Open Britain campaign against Brexit, said: “The only way to avoid a visible border on the island of Ireland, and to also avoid an economic border across the Irish Sea, is for the whole of the UK to stay in the customs union and the single market.”