The UK government’s current approach to resolving the problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol has been counterproductive and has further undermined trust...Compromises are achievable.
Summary
- Brexit
has meant leaving the EU’s single market and customs union, and
everyone agreed there would be no border infrastructure on the island of
Ireland. That required appropriate checks between Great Britain and
Northern Ireland, in order to ensure that goods entering Northern
Ireland destined for the Republic conformed to the rules of the EU’s
single market.
- The UK government’s current approach to resolving
the problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol has been
counterproductive and has further undermined trust. But there are
problems with the Protocol: some businesses in Britain and Northern
Ireland are losing out, and the refusal of the Democratic Unionist Party
to join the Northern Ireland Executive or allow the Assembly to meet
means that the political institutions of Northern Ireland are not
functioning and other pressing issues are not being addressed.
- Compromises are achievable.
- The EU should:
- Accept
that just ending the ‘grace periods’ – which mean that some checks on
goods are not being carried out – and implementing Commissioner
Šefčovič’s proposals would make the situation worse, because these
proposals would mean more checks than there are now. Further movement
from the EU is needed.
- Accept that most supermarket supply
chains pose no risk to the integrity of the EU internal market and
should allow for few-to-no checks.
- Accept that limited
divergence by the UK from EU standards and rules for products sold in
Northern Ireland should not in practice create risks for EU consumers,
and that a veterinary agreement – possibly based on equivalence - would
help considerably.
- The UK should:
- Drop the
Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which is currently making negotiations
with the EU impossible, including its confusing proposal that businesses
in Northern Ireland should be able to choose between making things
according to EU regulations and standards, or to UK ones.
- Acknowledge
that many Northern Ireland businesses welcome the access to the EU
single market that the Protocol gives them and that they will want to
stay in step with new EU rules and standards, so they can buy and sell
in a market of 450 million people.
- Propose a more far-reaching consultation mechanism for new EU laws applying to Northern Ireland.
- Both
sides should be willing to compromise on issues like how the
green/express lanes would work, the sharing of information, VAT, state
aid and governance.
- The arguments over the Protocol must not be
allowed to drag on. The longer they persist, the more likely they are to
cause political instability and economic disruption on the island of
Ireland. But if the arguments can be resolved, the UK and the EU can
start to build a more constructive relationship.
One
of the most striking features of Brexit is that those who argued most
strongly for it appear unwilling to take any responsibility for its
consequences. Nowhere has this been demonstrated more clearly than in
the case of the Northern Ireland Protocol, which is part of the
Withdrawal Agreement, an international treaty between the EU and the UK.
The
Protocol was negotiated and agreed by the EU and the UK because both
sides acknowledged that there was a problem with having Northern Ireland
outside of the EU single market and customs union, and the Republic of
Ireland inside them, while leaving the border open. And since the one
thing that everybody agreed on was that there could not be any checks,
infrastructure or customs officials on the border, some other way would
have to be found to ensure that goods moving from Northern Ireland to
the Republic conformed to the rules of the EU’s market.
This
problem, of course, stems from Brexit itself. In 2018, the then Prime
Minister Theresa May tried to negotiate an agreement in which the whole
of the UK would effectively remain aligned to the relevant parts of the
single market and the customs union, if no other solution could be found
during negotiations over the long-term relationship, but that plan
failed. And that left, as the only alternative, keeping Northern Ireland
in the same parts of the single market and doing checks in the Irish
Sea between Great Britain (GB) and Northern Ireland (NI). Thus, the
Northern Ireland Protocol was born.
How the Protocol became contested
Once the Protocol was signed, however, the problems began as the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that:
“There will be no checks on goods going from GB to NI, or NI to GB”.
He
also called the Protocol “a good arrangement ... with the minimum
possible bureaucratic consequences”, which was “fully compatible with
the Good Friday Agreement”.
The
government’s own impact assessment, however, said something very
different. “Goods arriving in Northern Ireland, including from Great
Britain would undergo regulatory checks in accordance with EU rules” and
an internal Treasury document was even more stark: “customs
declarations and documentary and physical checks … will be highly
disruptive to the NI economy”.
It is understandable why the
Protocol was created, given the dilemma it was trying to solve, but it
has led to economic and political problems. The Protocol has created
challenges for businesses trying to send goods to Northern Ireland from
Great Britain. And politically, the Protocol has resulted in the
collapse of power-sharing in Northern Ireland, with the Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP) refusing to enter the executive or even allow the
Northern Ireland Assembly to meet, on the grounds that they object to
Northern Ireland being treated differently to the rest of the United
Kingdom in ways that undermine unionist identity.
The current war
of words between the EU and the UK over the Protocol is deeply
unhelpful; it’s like an acrimonious divorce. There is a complete lack of
trust – the very thing that is needed to solve the problem – and until
trust is restored, it is hard to see anything changing.
The EU
argues it reached an agreement with the UK less than three years ago and
now British ministers are trying to get out of it by unilaterally
taking powers to over-ride the Protocol, while the UK argues that the EU
wants to apply the Protocol’s rules in a wholly disproportionate way.
The UK’s argument does not, however, square with what happened when the
Protocol was originally negotiated and the UK suggested checks in the
Irish Sea. And at the end of 2020, Michael Gove, who then led on
negotiations over the Protocol, said he had reached an agreement with
Maroš Šefčovič (the European Commissioner in charge of negotiations)
“which now means that the Protocol can be implemented in a pragmatic and
proportionate way.” It is no wonder that the EU distrusts the UK and
has no idea what it will do next.
And yet the fact that the
Northern Ireland institutions are not functioning is a real political
problem for power-sharing and for stability in Northern Ireland, which
the EU needs to recognise.
How to fix the Protocol
Although
relations between the UK and the EU are now in a pretty bad place, it
is possible to find a way forward, provided both sides are prepared to
move and then engage in hard, detailed negotiation. The issues are
indeed complex, but if politicians were capable of negotiating the
historic Belfast Good Friday Agreement – an extremely finely balanced
exercise in political courage, ingenuity and leadership – then surely
they can craft a solution here.
So, what needs to happen?
The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill
The
first thing the UK should recognise is that the Northern Ireland
Protocol Bill is the wrong way to go about fixing the problem; indeed it
is the biggest obstacle to reaching a deal with the EU. The Bill,
currently going through Parliament, would allow the British government
to disapply key parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The Bill
is clearly inconsistent with the Withdrawal Agreement that the UK
negotiated and signed with the EU and it should be withdrawn....
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