BELFAST (Reuters) – Ireland’s Prime Minister Michel Martin said on Thursday he believes there is a “landing zone” to reach a post-Brexit trade deal between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Martin, speaking after meeting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said they had agreed on the absolute necessity for a tariff and quota-free trade agreement between Britain and the European Union.
“It seems to me that there is a landing zone if that will is there on both sides, and I think it is,” said Martin, who became prime minister in June.
“My own gut instinct is that there is a shared understanding that we don’t need another shock to the economic system that a sub-optimal trade agreement would give alongside of the enormous shock of COVID,” he told reporters in Belfast.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Editing by Gareth Jones)
