Britain says will protect Northern Ireland's place in UK internal market

Britain said on Friday it would protect Northern Ireland's place in the UK internal market, following a newspaper report that the European Union had rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's proposals for avoiding a hard border in the province.

"We will protect Northern Ireland's place in the UK internal market," said a spokesman for the Department for Exiting the EU.

EU officials said discussions on the border issue this week had not made notable progress. EU negotiator Michel Barnier told French Television that the Irish question continued to pose a risk of failure for an overall agreement on an orderly Brexit.

Barnier's aides declined official comment on the British newspaper report. One EU official said British negotiators had put forward ideas which London had first advanced last summer and which had been rejected at the time in Brussels, where EU diplomats called them impractical and a risk to the EU market.

The British spokesman was responding to a report in The Telegraph which, citing EU diplomatic sources, said the EU had comprehensively rejected British proposals for Northern Ireland, casting doubt on the UK's ability to leave the customs union.

It said May's proposals were subjected to a "systematic and forensic annihilation" this week at a meeting between senior EU officials and Olly Robbins, the UK's lead Brexit negotiator.