Uncertainty has been a recurring theme in the EU–UK relationship since 2016.
The TCA, signed in 2020, remained deliberately silent on
future cooperation in several key policy areas, and both sides have had
to juggle the impact of a new agreement upon their trading relationship
with the consequences of a global pandemic.
Matters are further complicated by the fact that the EU does not
simply have a relationship with the United Kingdom as a whole. As a
result of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland negotiated as part of
the Withdrawal Agreement of 2019, it enjoys subtly different relations
with Great Britain on the one hand, and Northern Ireland on the other.
And it is the fallout from the Protocol that continues to dominate the
broader relationship between the EU and the UK.
At the time of writing, the two sides find themselves in a stand-off
over the UK’s insistence that the Protocol is not working and will need
to be either renegotiated or unilaterally amended. Given the insistence
of the EU on the need for technical negotiations to address practical
problems, and its consequent refusal to contemplate the amendment of the
Protocol itself, the British Government unveiled legislation allowing
it to unilaterally overturn parts of the agreement. In response, the EU
has threatened retaliation.
It has been a long and bumpy road from the referendum of 23 June 2016
to where we are today. The story of much of that intervening period has
been recounted many times and does not need retelling here. Suffice to
say that the sheer length of the Brexit process, and the bitterness and
polarisation it engendered left the UK profoundly divided between rival
political camps calling — respectively — for a second referendum and a
hard Brexit.
Boris Johnson’s election as leader of the Conservative Party ensured
the latter outcome. This in turn raised the thorny issue of the
so-called Northern Ireland ‘trilemma’. Simply put, absent something
approximating Single Market and Customs Union membership (negotiated by
Theresa May in the form of her infamous ‘backstop’), the choice was
between a border on the island of Ireland (rejected by both the UK and
the EU) and some kind of special status for Northern Ireland that
obviated the need for intra-Irish checks, consequently requiring them
between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Mr Johnson opted for the latter. However, the way he did so — denying
that the Protocol would necessitate any checks between Great Britain
and Northern Ireland — laid the foundations for the bitterness that was
to follow.
The Withdrawal Agreement
containing the Protocol was agreed on 17 October 2019 and came into
force on 1 February 2020. From April of that year, the EU– UK Joint
Committee that it created negotiated how precisely the Protocol was to
be implemented. Even before those negotiations started, the UK had
produced a Command Paper
(in May 2020) that argued for flexibility when it came to the frequency
and complexity of checks on agri-food moving from Great Britain to
Northern Ireland.
Because the Joint Committee did not come to an agreement until 10 December 2020, the two sides agreed on some ‘easements’ to allow businesses time to adapt.
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