war in Ukraine thwart Brexit tensions between Brussels and London
Brexit tensions between the European Union and the United Kingdom are running high. The war in Ukraine makes matters even more sensitive.
The game has started again. The United Kingdom is once again on a collision course with the European Union over Brexit. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is expected to announce national legislation on Tuesday that would allow the removal of the Northern Ireland Protocol. That document, approved by both sides in 2019, regulates how trade between the UK parties and Northern Ireland will precede the Brexit results. More precisely: the two controls on the movement of goods between parts of the United Kingdom. Although the controls are in the ports of Northern Ireland, men speak between Great Britain and Ireland.
Where do those controls come from? During the Brexit negotiations, the British government had the choice to remain in the European customs union and internal market for goods. That had drawn up a procedure, but it implied that the United Kingdom could not conduct an independent international trade policy and was bound by European case law through the Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Unacceptable, thought the then influential Brexiters. Because the good countries of 1998 I agree controls between Northern Ireland and Ireland, there was only one option left: goods between the North and Great Britain. The agreement, also known as the Withdrawal Agreement, was knocked off in October 2019.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson entered during those negotiations that as head of government he would never jeopardize the unity of the United Kingdom, especially not by means of an Irish sea border. “Under no circumstances, no matter what happens, I will allow the European Union or anyone else to split up in the Irish Sea.” Sound dogged† But just weeks later, Johnson grudgingly agreed that Northern Ireland would remain part of the European customs union and internal market for goods. The impact study that the British department had made before Brexit around the same period, made it clear that there would be paperwork and checks. Johnson remained even after the Withdrawal Agreement was signed keep it upside down† Don’t quote.
Painfully necessary
Even if the United Kingdom only carries out a fraction of the agreed checks, they cost time and therefore money. That is not to the liking of the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which seeks close ties between Belfast and London. The party held last week’s elections in Ireland’s Sinn Fès and in the meantime to join a new government, with both parties entering into the Good Friday Agreements. Exactly 100 years after Northern Ireland’s independence from Ireland, the party that must remove the inspections between the two parts of the country. Prior Prime Minister Theresa May later quipped that the DUP pre-decided its proposal, which would have been a sea border, in the spring of 2019.
In any case, the DUP gets the support of Johnson, who is also chairman of the – in full – Conservative and Unionist Party. He said on Thursday that ‘Northern Ireland’s democratic institutions have collapsed and the dysfunctional Northern Ireland Protocol needs to be reworked’. According to him, the Northern Ireland Protocol harms the Good Friday Agreements, according to the Union it does just the opposite. A formal legal opinion is currently awaited from Suella Braverman, the Solicitor General representing the Johnson administration on the matter. She is likely to argue that the European Union is behaving unreasonably and that is why the UK government is to remove parts of the Protocol. ‘Change is usefully necessary’, Braverman said in advance record to the BBC†
Wholeheartedly supported by his German colleague Olaf Scholz, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open VLD) rejected this point in Berlin on Tuesday. “The Northern Ireland Protocol was just one of the elements that the UK itself had used during the negotiations. And now that suddenly turned out to be a problem’, says De Croo. The head of government is not wrong, knowing that the Johnson administration was much less interested in the alternatives to the current arrangement. De Croo immediately pointed out that a unilateral termination by the British side is a major problem for the integrity of the European internal market. ‘The internal market is of the utmost importance to us. If the United Kingdom cancels the Northern Ireland Protocol, the whole system will be overhauled.’
‘Nice weather’
A warning to Johnson. Signed in the trade agreement, this includes extensive countermeasures if one of the parties does not comply with the agreements made. For example, the Union can introduce tariffs – whether or not subject to restrictions – for British traders to find it much more difficult to sell their products on the European market. Not an obvious one for the United Kingdom. The European Union still accounts for 65 percent of British exports. But Industrial Strategy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng does not believe it will lead to a trade war between both sides of the Channel. Presumably that’s right. Against the background of the war Ukraine, both sides of the Channel are not waiting for an economic blow.
In any case, the Commission is very annoyed by the attitude of the United Kingdom, according to a concerned European diplomat. Russia is, as it were, misusing the war in Ukraine to whitewash the Brexit dossier. They play about one thing again, but show themselves to be totally unreliable about the other’, it sounds. At the first Partnership meeting between UK and European MPs Last Thursday, British Minister Michael Ellis immediately spoke about the war and British-European cooperation in that context. He then goes on to say that he is sad that the United Kingdom has not yet received permission from Brussels to participate in, among others, the European research program Horizon and the satellite program Cop. ‘It was downright hallucinatory, we are also to blame,’ says the diplomat.
In the United States, the developments on the other side of the trans-altant receivables are followed with receivables. Members of Congress warned British Foreign Secretary Liz Trus in a letter not to violate US projects with the European Union. The second round of negotiations on a cooperation agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States recently took place in the Scottish city of Aberdeen. But both US President Joe Biden and the chairman of influential Ways and Means Committee Richard Neil has Irish roots and do not want the British government to violate the agreements.