EU official says UK PM's Johnson's Brexit offer 'can't fly'
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s last ditch Brexit proposal “can’t fly” because it an unworkable move backwards that leaves Britain and the European Union far apart, a senior European Union official said on Thursday.

Just 28 days before the United Kingdom is due to leave the EU, both sides are positioning themselves for a delay or else a disorderly no-deal Brexit. Johnson says he wants a deal but insists there can be no delay to Brexit beyond Oct. 31.

The cool reception from Brussels to Johnson’s proposal indicates just how far apart the two sides are on the first departure of a sovereign state from the EU project, which was forged from Europe’s ruins after World War Two.

A European Parliament Brexit group believes that Johnson’s proposals “do not represent a basis for an agreement”, according to the draft of a statement seen by Reuters ahead of release later in the day.

Separately, a senior EU official said Johnson’s proposal “can’t fly”, largely because it did not offer a solution for the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland once the UK province has left the EU’s customs union.

“It does not contain any decent solution for customs. And it erects a hard border on the island of Ireland,” said the senior EU official.

“It would have to be fundamentally reworked,” an EU diplomat said, adding that time was short before the bloc’s leaders meet in Brussels in two weeks for a make-or-break Brexit summit on Oct. 17-18.