RBS says Irish border issue is key in bank’s post-Brexit future

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A man walks past a mural marking unionist territory on May 4, 2016 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

“We are working on the basis, we are working towards a March 2019 timetable until we know otherwise and it’s not just the issue of Amsterdam for us (RBS decided to move its European business to Amsterdam to be able to continue to operate in Europe), we’ve also got a very big banking operation in Ireland and the biggest banking operation in Northern Ireland so the nature of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland is also an important issue to us in terms of what we have to structurally do,” Stevenson said.

On Wednesday, the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier said that Northern Ireland should remain under EU rules after Brexit, adding that the “backstop” agreement for this had been reached back in December.

However, May’s coalition ally in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), has expressed its opposition against this idea and threatened to revoke its support in parliament.

Also on Wednesday, Prime Minister May seemed to have shifted her position arguing that the leader of the U.K. could never agree with the EU’s idea, which would keep Northern Ireland under the union’s rules.