EU ‘won’t let Ireland be singled out if Protocol talks falter’

EUROPE will not allow

Ireland to be singled out in the fallout if negotiations on the Northern Ireland Protocol end in failure, EU commissioner Mairead McGuinness has insisted.

Ireland’s representative in the European Commission was commenting on the potential for us to be affected if there is a breakdown of the Brexit trading arrangement, designed to prevent a hard land border.

Ms McGuinness also said UK and EU relations would be in a ‘very, very difficult place’ if there was any truth in claims, made by former Downing Street chief adviser Dominic Cummings, that the UK always intended to ditch the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The EU and UK are set for an intense round of negotiations in the coming weeks, after Brussels last week published a range of proposals aimed at cutting the red tape the protocol has imposed on moving goods from Great Britain to the North.

But the plan did not address a key UK demand – the removal of the oversight function of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the protocol’s operation.

UK Brexit minister David Frost has warned that his government will be prepared to suspend aspects of the protocol – by triggering its Article 16 mechanism – if agreement can’t be reached on changing how it operates.

That has raised the prospect of the EU taking retaliatory action, potentially in the form of further restrictions on trade with the UK. Ms McGuinness told RTÉ One’s The Week In Politics it was more important to focus on getting a successful outcome to the negotiations than the ‘what ifs’ of a potential talks breakdown.

However, she added: ‘If things break down and if there is a sense in which the UK is not prepared to agree to existing commitments or to reach an agreement on a new deal, then of course Europe will have to act in Europe’s best interest. So I think that that’s clear.

‘As to the specific issues or where we might take action, I mean, there are many ways to do it, we do not have the lists now.’

Ms McGuinness was asked if Ireland would be the EU member state hardest hit if the protocol talks fail.

‘If things go wrong we could find ourselves in a difficult situation,’ she responded.

However, Ms McGuinness added: ‘I don’t find any sense amongst the member states that they want Ireland to be singled out.’

Last week, Mr Cummings suggested the UK government always intended to ditch the protocol that it signed up to in the 2020 Withdrawal Agreement.

Ms McGuinness said the claim had left her ‘speechless’.

‘How do you deal politically and in a democracy and in diplomacy, if that is a fact?’ the EU commissioner asked.

‘If Dominic Cummings’s tweets are true, then I think we are in a very, very difficult place.’

The Fine Gael member added: ‘What troubles me is that sometimes on the UK side, the minute there is a solution, they find a problem in that solution, and that’s not progress.’

‘We could end up in a difficult situation’