EU views North as a new Berlin in Brexit talks

There is room for a special deal on the North in any Brexit deal. 

That was the message from Rainer Wieland, the vice president of the European Parliament and a member of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, when speaking in the European Commission office in Dublin last week.

“We always included a special clause for Berlin in all our EU agreements when it was part of eastern Germany,” he said saying he saw the North a similar position to Berlin in those years — inside the EU but outside the old West Germany. Businesses in the North seem to be of the same opinion, with most surveys showing that companies have yet to experience any real fallout from the Brexit decision.