(London) The European Council next Friday, 15 December, should give the green light to the agreement reached by the European Union and the United Kingdom last week, enabling us to move on to the second phase of the Brexit talks. It is then, though, that the real problems will begin: Professor Holger Breinlich, one of the leading experts in international economics in the UK, and lecturer at the London School of Economics and the University of Nottingham, has no doubts about it. “The agreement on Northern Ireland is a mess and the road to Brexit is all uphill”. “The EU and the UK – he told SIR news agency – have pledged not to reinstate a hard border between the two Irelands, which will both comply with the same market rules. I do not see how this can be compatible with the fact that Northern Ireland, with the Brexit, will leave the customs union and the single market together with the rest of the United Kingdom”, the expert says. “It is an agreement full of ‘constructive ambiguity’  which only served to move on to the second phase of negotiations”.  For Breinlich, the real issue with the Northern Ireland border is the exchange of goods rather than the movement of people. “For the UK, leaving the single market and the customs union would mean having different technical standards for goods and paying duties, and this would lead to customs controls at the Northern Irish border. However, we can envisage free movement of people and workers under a visa system similar to that in force in the United States”.