UK rejects EU’s Northern Ireland moves, saying
Brexit deal must be renegotiated
Downing Street says Brussels overtures are
insufficient and ‘comprehensive’ solutions needed
Daniel
Boffey in Brussels
Mon 26 Jul
2021 20.39 BST
Boris
Johnson has rejected Brussels’ latest attempt to iron out problems with the
post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland, insisting that the withdrawal
agreement signed last year must be renegotiated.
A series of
proposals published by the European Commission on Monday with the aim of easing
implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol were said to be insufficient
for the scale of the problems.
A UK
government spokesperson said the two sides instead needed “comprehensive and
durable solutions”. David Frost, the minister responsible for Brexit issues,
has said that without a major change to the legal text of the protocol, the
government will consider triggering article 16 of the EU-UK agreement to
suspend parts of the deal.
Such a move
would be permitted where it can be shown that “serious economic, societal or
environmental difficulties” are arising. But the commission would probably
challenge such a decision. It would be likely to go to arbitration, raising the
risk of trade sanctions down the line.
The
government issued a command paper last week detailing the key changes it wishes
to make to the arrangements under which Northern Ireland in effect stays in the
EU’s single market and the bloc’s customs rules are enforced on goods passing
across the Irish Sea.
The UK
government spokesperson said it was only by engaging with Downing Street’s
demands that the issues relating to a range of problems, which have caused
political instability and violence in Northern Ireland in recent months, could
be solved.
However, he
said what the EU proposed represented “only a small subset of the many
difficulties caused by the way the protocol is operating”.
“We need
comprehensive and durable solutions if we are to avoid further disruption to
everyday lives in Northern Ireland,” he added.
The UK’s
outright rejection on Monday of the commission’s overtures on some of the
difficult issues, including the flow of medicines from Great Britain to
Northern Ireland and the movement of guide dogs and cattle, further sets the
two sides on a collision course.
A series of
grace periods are due to end in October and in January next year, while the
commission has insisted that it will not rewrite the legal text agreed with
Johnson in 2019.
Lord Frost
has insisted that he is sincere in wanting the protocol to be successful but
that he cannot envisage a situation that will gain the support of all
communities in Northern Ireland without a new negotiation on the text. The
command paper issued last week had suggested that political pressures in 2019
forced the government to agree to the protocol and sign it in 2020.
Loyalist
groups have claimed that the protocol is undermining their British identity by
creating barriers to trade within the UK.
The
commission has suggested it rewrite its own laws to allow UK regulators to
approve medicines destined for Northern Ireland – but strictly on the basis
that they would implement EU law.
A UK
government spokesperson said the proposal still fell short. “The EU’s proposal
was a welcome start but it would be complex to operate, onerous and would not
deal at all with those medicines, such as new cancer drugs, which under current
arrangements must be licensed by the European Medicines Agency in Northern
Ireland,” he said.
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