Britain and the EU have become locked in an escalating row over trade rules for Northern Ireland ahead of crunch Brexit talks this week and US president Joe Biden’s arrival in the UK for the G7 summit.
EU figures including France’s European affairs minister Clément Beaune on Monday hit out at comments from British Brexit minister David Frost in the FT that the EU should abandon “legal purism” and embrace “common sense”.
An EU official on Monday retorted that Britain had reached a moment of decision to either implement its Brexit deal on Northern Ireland “in good faith” or “continue along the more confrontational path that it seems to have chosen so far.”