PostedJune 13, 2022, 1:03 p.m.
The British government presents its bill to Parliament on Monday modifying the post-Brexit status of the British province. It is considered illegal by the EU, which threatens reprisals.
Boris Johnson referred to “a fairly trivial series of adjustments”.
AFP
London assures that it continues to favor negotiations to settle the Brexit crisis and get Northern Ireland out of the political deadlock that resulted from it. But no progress has been seen since Boris Johnson’s government warned that it intended to legislate to reverse an international treaty it negotiated and signed. He assures that his text does not violate international law.
The Northern Irish protocol aims to settle the Irish border conundrum that has long blocked the UK’s exit from the European Union: protecting the European single market without causing the return of a physical demarcation between the British province and the Republic of Ireland, a member of the European Union, thus preserving the peace. To resolve this squaring of the circle, Johnson’s government had accepted that Northern Ireland should remain de facto within the European market, establishing a customs border in the Irish Sea, with the island of Great Britain.
“New Green Channel”
If the text has not been fully applied, it has caused supply difficulties and strong political tensions in the nation with a bloody past. Because for the members of the unionist community, it threatens the place of the province within the United Kingdom to which they are viscerally attached.
The UK government wants to introduce a new system so that goods moving and staying within the UK go through a “new green channel”, freeing them from red tape. Goods destined for the EU will remain subject to all the checks and controls applied under European law.
“These are necessary bureaucratic changes, frankly it’s a fairly trivial series of adjustments,” Boris Johnson pleaded on LBC radio Monday morning, assuring that the project was legal. “Our primary commitment as a country is to the Belfast Good Friday Agreement”, signed in 1998 to end three decades of violence between Unionists and Republicans, killing 3,500 people.
“A breach of mutual trust”
Brussels has said it is ready for adjustments but has always refused to renegotiate the principle of the protocol, threatening commercial reprisals in the event of unilateral modification of the agreement. The head of diplomacy Liz Truss pleaded her case by calling Monday morning the vice-president of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic and his Irish counterpart, Simon Coveney, without convincing. Sefcovic assured that the EU had offered “solutions”, regretting “unilateral action undermining mutual trust”.
Coveney, with whom the call lasted barely 12 minutes, regretted a text “which would violate British commitments in terms of international law”, accusing Ms Truss of “not having entered into meaningful negotiations with the EU”.
(AFP)
