In announcing Monday that he hopes to break the
Brexit deadlock by next month, Prime Minister
Boris Johnson is seeking to solve in a matter of weeks a puzzle that has troubled European and
British specialists for more than two years.
Before negotiations on Britain's departure from the
European Union even began in 2017, the vexing issue of how to keep goods flowing seamlessly between EU member
Ireland and
Northern Ireland when it leaves along with the rest of the U.K. — without time-consuming border checks — was identified as an obstacle that could derail the entire process.
How and exactly where they will be performed is something we are still working on," one of them responded when asked by The Associated Press whether vehicles would be stopped at the sinuous
Irish land border on Nov. 1.