The U.K. was initially supposed to exit the EU on March 29. But that departure date has been postponed multiple times, and Britain now has until Oct. 31 to leave.
. The issue is seen as the most controversial part of the existing Withdrawal Agreement, and involves maintaining a seamless border separating Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
But Tusk, responding on Twitter, reiterated the EU's position that the backstop is an insurance policy to avoid a hard border "unless and until an alternative is found." He also blasted critics of the plan, and said they had not proposed "realistic" alternative solutions. The EU's refusal to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement will lead to the predicted no-deal Brexit situation, according to Ballard.
"It's the EU that will trigger the hard Brexit, rather than Johnson, because they will say: 'No, there's no further negotiation to be done. You're starting to drag or further drag the European economy down, off you go, leave,'" he explained. "That I think is going to be the critical thing that the market probably isn't quite aware of at the moment: It's going to an EU-led hard Brexit, more perhaps than Boris Johnson-led."
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