Irish leader sees no willingness from UK to end Brexit trade stalemate
The British government appears to have no political will to resolve its trade dispute with the European Union and risks endangering the hard-won peace in Northern Ireland, Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government said last month it would pass legislation to scrap parts of a trade treaty with the EU signed less than two years ago. The EU has threatened to retaliate, raising the specter of a trade war between the two major trading partners.
“I just don’t detect a sustained political will on the part of the UK government to fix this, to fix this, because it can undoubtedly be fixed,” Martin told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France.
Britain has said its unilateral decision to change the legally binding treaty – an apparent breach of international law – is an insurance policy in case it fails to reach an agreement with the 27-nation bloc to end their dispute over post-Brexit trade rules.
Martin said that instead of the UK government trying to help solve problems, “we’ve actually seen efforts to block deals and introduce new problems”.
British Unionists in Northern Ireland – the only part of the UK that shares a border with an EU member state, Martin’s Ireland – oppose trade rules, which have created a customs border at sea from Ireland.
They say the new controls have placed a burden on businesses and frayed ties between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Britain’s Conservative government insists the rules are hurting the economy and undermining peace in Northern Ireland.
When Britain left the bloc and its borderless free trade area, an agreement was reached to keep Ireland’s land border free of customs posts and other checks, as an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in the north. Ireland.
Instead, to protect the EU’s single market, checks are carried out on certain goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
“Unilateral action to set aside a solemn agreement would be deeply damaging,” Martin told the European Parliament on Wednesday. “It would mark a historic low point signaling a disregard for the essential principles of law that are the foundations of international relations. And that literally wouldn’t benefit anyone. »