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NI protocol: Sunak criticised over ‘plans for EU
chief to meet king’
Meeting between Charles and Ursula von de Leyen
cancelled, reports say, as Varadkar says deal ‘inching towards conclusion’
Lisa
O'Carroll Brexit correspondent
@lisaocarroll
Sat 25 Feb
2023 15.04 GMT
Rishi Sunak
is facing criticism after reports that a meeting between King Charles and the
president of the European Commission was cancelled days before the announcement
of an expected deal on the Northern Ireland protocol.
It comes as
the Irish taisoeach, Leo Varadkar, told reporters on Saturday that talks over
an agreement were “inching towards a conclusion”.
According
to reports, there had been plans for an in-person meeting between the king and
Ursula von der Leyen, as part of a trip to the UK to seal the deal on the
Brexit trading arrangements.
Government
sources denied Sunak was intending to use King Charles to endorse his
much-anticipated deal to end the row with the EU over the NI protocol.
“It would
be wrong to suggest the king would be involved in anything remotely political,”
a government source told the PA news agency.
The mooted
meeting on Saturday and plan to announce a revised pact, codenamed the Windsor
agreement, were cancelled, according to reports, but hope remains for the
announcement of an agreement on Monday after Sunak and Von der Leyen had
“positive” discussions about the Northern Ireland protocol on Friday.
Buckingham
Palace said it would not comment.
Sammy
Wilson, the Brexit spokesperson for the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), said
any consideration of involving the king was politically “naive”.
“Not only
is the prime minister naive if that’s what he was planning to do, but this is a
cynical use, or abuse of the king,” Wilson told Sky News on Saturday.
He said it
would have meant “dragging the king into a hugely controversial political
issue, not just in Northern Ireland but even within his own party”.
Conservative
Eurosceptic and former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg told the Times the
planned meeting with the king was “on the borderline of constitutional
propriety”.
Lady Hoey,
a Northern Irish Brexit supporter and former Labour MP, said any such meeting
would have been “outrageous”.
Peter Kyle,
the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, said Downing Street should have realised
utilising the king would have “constitutional implications” and been “highly
insensitive to the politics of Northern Ireland”.
“It
certainly is nothing we should be involving His Majesty in,” he told Sky News.
No 10 said
Sunak would spend the weekend speaking to “relevant stakeholders” as he looked
to get a protocol deal over the line.
Downing
Street said “intensive negotiations” with Brussels were still taking place.
Varadkar
told reporters: “Certainly the deal isn’t done yet, but I do think we are
inching towards a conclusion.
“There is
the possibility of agreement in the next few days but by no means guaranteed …
There’s still a gap to be closed,” the Irish taisoeach said, adding there was
ongoing engagement between the UK government and the European Commission.
Varadkar,
who played a key role when the protocol was agreed in 2019, encouraged London,
Brussels and Northern Irish politicians “to go the extra mile” to help reach an
agreement, saying the benefits would be “huge”.
The DUP is
boycotting power-sharing in Northern Ireland in opposition to the protocol.
Wilson said
his party would only accept a deal if EU law did not apply in Northern Ireland.
He told Sky
News: “If the prime minster succeeds in getting that we will embrace it, but if
he hasn’t succeeded in achieving that aim then as part of the UK we cannot
accept it.”
The
controversy blew up as the government confirmed it had no central database
tracking regulatory divergence between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, an
issue which goes to the heart of the DUP’s objections to the protocol.
David
Jones, a leading member of the pro-Brexit Conservative party European Research
Group, says there are now 500 pieces of EU legislation that apply in Northern
Ireland but do not apply in the rest of the UK since Brexit came into force in
2020.
But the
Europe minister, Leo Docherty, wrote to a House of Lords protocol committee on
Friday to say there was no “single unit” in Whitehall monitoring the emergence
of new EU laws, rules and regulations affecting Northern Ireland.
He told
Lord Jay, the chair of the committee, that monitoring divergence was “a task
which concerns and involves all government departments with relevant policy
remits”.
He added:
“I would note that impact assessments for UK regulatory proposals include
cost/benefit analyses on the effects of any divergence. While no such impact
assessments will be triggered where divergence arises via EU-led changes in its
regulations, the processes of monitoring and explanatory memoranda will allow
the government and affected parties to assess the effects.”
The EU and
Downing Street said the prime minister and Von der Leyen would speak again in
the “coming days”.
The pair
have spoken three times in the past week, including holding face-to-face
conversations on the fringes of the Munich security conference last Saturday.
It is
expected that Sunak will also schedule a second meeting with the DUP, which has
called for the end to the application of EU law in Northern Ireland, something
that is almost certainly ruled out as this would require a complete rewriting
of much of the protocol.
PA Media
contributed to this report
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