PublishedMay 22, 2022, 2:21 p.m.
Northern Irish unionists refuse to take part in a new government in Belfast if the protocol on customs controls concluded within the framework of Brexit is not modified. The British minister responsible for Northern Ireland repeated that it was up to the European Union to soften its position in order to resolve the dispute.
British Minister Brandon Lewis fears that the absence of an executive in Northern Ireland will continue if Brussels does not give ground.
AFP
The British government has provoked the anger of Brussels and Washington by threatening to act unilaterally to modify the Northern Irish protocol, concluded within the framework of Brexit and providing for specific customs controls for the British province.
London is thus trying to appease the discontent of Northern Irish Unionists who refuse to take part in a new government in Belfast – led for the first time by the Republicans of Sinn Fein following their victory in the local elections on May 5 – if the protocol does not is not modified.
Questioned by the newspaper “Sunday Telegraph”, the minister responsible for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, said he feared that the absence of an executive in Northern Ireland would continue if Brussels did not give ground. “I myself made this point to the EU before the election. In my opinion, it was much easier to get a deal before the election than following,” he told the newspaper. “The idea that it was going to be easier following the election was crazy from the EU,” he added.
The protocol was signed to protect the European single market following Brexit without causing the return of a hard border between British Northern Ireland and the European Republic of Ireland, and thus preserve the peace concluded in 1998 with the agreement Good Friday, following three decades of bloody unrest between Unionists and Republicans.
Washington’s concern
London wants to renegotiate this protocol in depth. The EU, which reiterated on Friday its desire to reach “common solutions”, is only ready for adjustments. This text creates a de facto customs border with Great Britain and threatens, according to the unionists, the place of the province within the United Kingdom to which they are viscerally attached.
After London clarified its intentions, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi expressed “deep concern”, warning that the US Congress would block a free trade deal coveted by the UK if peace was threatened.
On Saturday, the head of British diplomacy, Liz Truss, welcomed a delegation of American parliamentarians led by Democrat Richard Neal. The latter evoked on Twitter a “frank discussion concerning our duty to protect peace and stability on the island of Ireland”.
He called for “good faith negotiations with the EU to find lasting solutions to post-Brexit trade between Britain and Northern Ireland”. Liz Truss said on Twitter that she talked to him regarding
the UK’s ‘unwavering commitment’ to the Good Friday Agreement. According to ‘The Observer’ newspaper, however, the minister told the US delegation that London might not let the political stalemate ‘elongate’ in Northern Ireland.
(AFP)