Ireland’s Indian-origin Prime Minister leo Varadkar on Friday raised the prospect of a “deep” free trade agreement between the UK and the EU following Brexit.
Varadkar, 38, described Britain’s impending exit from the 27-member economic bloc, of which Ireland is a member, as the “challenge of our generation” in a keynote address during his first visit as Irish Taoiseach (PM) to Belfast in Northern Ireland.
“If the UK does not want to stay in the customs union, perhaps there can be a EU-UK customs union...If the UK does not want to stay in the single market, perhaps it could enter into a deep free trade agreement with the EU and rejoin European Free Trade Association (EFTA), of which it was a member prior to accession,” he said in his speech at the Queen’s University.