Insight
How to implement the Northern Ireland Protocol by Sam Lowe 14 May 2020
The UK must face up to its responsibilities and work with the EU to ensure goods can move as freely as possible between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This insight offers a range of suggestions for how to ensure the Protocol, and the issues it creates, can be de-dramatised. Disagreements over the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement’s Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland threaten to scupper the EU-UK trade negotiations. The EU has been unnerved by statements from Prime Minister Boris Johnson that imply he does not intend to uphold the agreement he signed in January. The EU is also bothered by the UK’s apparent foot-dragging when it comes to bringing the Protocol into effect on the ground in Northern Ireland. The UK, for its part, believes the EU is failing to be flexible and take into account the need to keep Northern Ireland’s Unionists on board. Tensions most recently boiled over with a squabble over whether the EU would be allowed to open an office in Belfast, from which its officials can monitor the implementation of the Protocol. The UK government has refused the request, saying a permanent EU office would be unnecessary and locally divisive. Yet despite continued frustrations, there are signs that the UK is beginning to take its commitments more seriously: it has reportedly told the Commission that it has hired some of the new vets needed to check animal products entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain. This is a positive step, for if the two sides are to make progress on the Protocol in time for the transition period concluding at the end of year, the UK must first face up to the consequences of its decisions. As the only UK nation to share a (until recently, violently contested) land border with the EU, Brexit threatened Northern Ireland’s position in the UK’s single market from the beginning. My colleague John Springford argued in early 2018 that the UK would need to choose between close continued economic integration with the EU, or a customs and regulatory border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, or between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. And so it came to pass. When Johnson agreed to the Protocol in October 2019, he made two choices. He rightly chose to avoid reinstating a land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. But he also chose to prioritise Great Britain’s regulatory flexibility and ability to sign new free trade agreements CER INSIGHT: How to implement the Northern Ireland Protocol 14 May 2020
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