In recent weeks I have been hearing a lot - both publicly and privately - from EU leaders, and the chief executives of some of the region's biggest companies. No wonder. They've had a lot on their plate with events in Ukraine, a transformation of their energy supply lines, and the prospect of knock-on effects, including a possible recession.

But I found many were also planning for the possibility of a major deterioration in trade relations with the UK if the UK makes unilateral changes to the Brexit deal relating to Northern Ireland and if those moves are deemed illegal.

Herbert Deiss, the chief executive of Europe's biggest carmaker, Volkswagen, told me he recently hosted high-level discussions with the British ambassador to Berlin about the possibility of a trade war.

"There's a lot of communication going on. And there's also a dependency," he told me. "We have a British brand, Bentley, which is doing extremely well… also the UK is our biggest export market in Europe for the premium brands for VW and Audi ... so I think there will be, let's say, a mutual interest now to keep [trade] open."

But while that's what everyone wants, there's a quiet recognition that it might not be what they get.

At a recent private lunch, one European leader asked whether they thought that the difficulties over Northern Ireland could lead to a trade war, curtly answered "yes". In this particular leader's eyes, there was a genuine shock that the pragmatic solution, agreed by both sides, could be ripped up. And the perception is that the risk from a trade war of doing "harm to your country" arises principally from internal party politics, rather than substantive concerns about Northern Ireland.

The Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, told me trade wars are a "lose-lose situation". And he suggested the key antagonism over which he was trying to find compromise was between Paris and London.

"We will try to calm down the situation between France and the United Kingdom as much as possible because I believe that only Putin and our enemies will be happy with yet another disagreement between such close partners as the United Kingdom and the European Union," he said.

At the same event the Irish Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, told me that "hopefully" such a fate would be avoided because a trade war would be "shocking" and "unnecessary".

عند سؤاله عما إذا كان الاتحاد الأوروبي يعد قوائم بالسلع البريطانية التي سيتم فرض رسوم جمركية على أساسها ، قال لي السيد مارتن: "لن ندخل في تفاصيل أي شيء من هذا القبيل ، لأنه من المأمول أن يكون هذا شيئًا لم نقم به حتى يجب أن أفكر. في الوقت الحالي ، أنا أقول ببساطة ، وكنت أقول باستمرار ، انزل إلى هناك ، وادخل النفق ، حكومة المملكة المتحدة والاتحاد الأوروبي ، تفاوض واحصل على التكنوقراط هناك. "

في الأسابيع اللاحقة ، سار دبلوماسيون إيرلنديون في أروقة أوروبا ، محذرين مما يرون أنه "نقطة منخفضة" في العلاقات بين الاتحاد الأوروبي والمملكة المتحدة ، ويقولون إن برلين وباريس تدعمان الرد القوي.

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