In a statement to Parliament, Foreign Minister Liz Truss explained the planned legislation to facilitate the movement of goods, apply the British tax regime in Northern Ireland and give London more say in the laws that govern the province.
He said the legislation will not break international law and will not be introduced immediately, underlining the British government’s desire to continue talks with Brussels in parallel to try to find a negotiated solution.
However, despite warnings from the European Union about adopting unilateral measures, the new law would modify parts of the so-called Northern Ireland Protocolwhich created a de facto customs border at sea between the province and the rest of the UK.
“I am announcing our intention to introduce legislation in the coming weeks to make changes to the protocol,” Truss told Parliament to boos from the opposition. “Our preference remains a negotiated solution with the EU and, in parallel with the introduction of the legislationwe remain open to new conversations”.
The initiative to outline the legislation, which provides for a “green channel” for those goods that only move from the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland and not beyond, was approved by the team of senior ministers in Johnson’s cabinet.
Since the start of the Brexit negotiations in 2017, this British region with a troubled past, historically and culturally very close to the neighboring Republic of Ireland – a member country of the EU – has always been the biggest hurdle to overcome.
And despite the fact that the United Kingdom officially left the bloc in February 2020 and completely in January 2021, the protocol is now causing tensions again, not only between London and Brussels, but also with the autonomous regional institutions of Northern Ireland.
The 1988 Good Friday peace deal, which ended three decades of bloody conflict between Protestant unionists and Catholic republicans, mandated that both sides share power in the regional executive of this British nation of 1.9 million people.
However, 12 days after the historic victory of the Republican Party Sinn Fein -former political arm of the armed group IRA and supporter of the reunification of Ireland- in the regional legislative, the unionist party DUP it blocks the autonomous parliament and refuses to form a government until London modifies the protocol.
To avoid the return of a physical border with the Republic of Ireland, unacceptable to the republicans and which could jeopardize the fragile peace, the protocol imposes customs controls on products arriving in the region from the rest of the United Kingdom.
Unionists denounce that this threatens their place in the country.
The United Kingdom, which has been demanding an in-depth renegotiation of the text from the European Union for months, affirms that “it has never suggested discarding it” but rather “reforming it”.
“The question is how to do it,” launched the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson after meeting on Monday in Belfast with the representatives of the five regional parties to try to unblock the situation.
“We would like to do it in a consensual way with our friends and partners, smoothing out the problems,” he said, referring to the EU, “but to achieve this, to have a guarantee, we also have to proceed with a legislative solution at the same time,” he stressed.
“We have always tried to approach this matter calmly. It is an opinion shared by both the prime minister and the foreign minister” and “we will take it into account when we establish the next steps,” said the Downing Street spokesman on Truss’s intervention in the House of Commons.
The European Union, which is willing to make “adjustments” to the protocol but not to renegotiate it, stresses that it was negotiated and signed by both parties and that Failing to apply it unilaterally would not only be an “unacceptable” breach of mutual trust but also a violation of international law.
And the apparently unconvinced unionists in the DUP were still claiming on Monday that they will not allow the leader of Sin Feinn in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, to become regional prime minister until London moves from words to actions, approving the legislative amendment, something that could take months.
For its part, USAwhich was the guarantor of the Good Friday agreement, has expressed alarm at suggestions that the UK could unilaterally withdraw the application of the text designed to guarantee peace.
Source: Ambito
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