ray hutstone wrote:Both Eire and Northern Ireland (or the UK, to be strictly accurate) are sovereign independent countries. Why is the border between them any different from that between other sovereign countries?
The ILB (Irish Land Boundary) is a border between two sovereign countries true, but it comes with a few wrinkles, including: both countries are part of the Common Travel Area, Eire is part of the fiscal territory of the EU, both Eire and Northern Ireland are part of the EU Single Market. The major wrinkle of course, is that border controls are not performed at or even near the border; quite where UK import and export controls* and Eire's (EU) import and export controls* are performed is beyond my will to live, but wherever they are performed, it ain't at the border.
* and I'm talking customs/transit controls, not consumer protection/Single Market ones.