UK, EU strike a new deal to fix Brexit trade dispute

Leaders hail ‘new chapter’ allowing goods to flow freely to Northern Ireland

LONDON — The U.K. and the European Union sealed a deal Monday to resolve their thorny post-Brexit trade dispute over Northern Ireland, hailing the agreement as the start of a “new chapter” in their often fractious relationship.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the grandly titled “Windsor Framework” after agreeing to the final details in Windsor, near London.

Von der Leyen told a news conference it was “historic what we have achieved today.”

Sunak said there had been a “decisive breakthrough.”

The agreement, which will allow goods to flow freely to Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom, ends a dispute that has soured U.K.-EU relations, sparked the collapse of the Belfast-based regional government and shaken Northern Ireland’s decades-old peace process.

Fixing it ends a long-running irritant for von der Leyen and is a big victory for Sunak — but not the end of his troubles.

For Sunak, selling the deal to his own Conservative Party and its Northern Irish allies may be a tougher struggle.

Now the prime minister awaits the judgment of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which is boycotting the region’s power-sharing government until the trade arrangements are changed to its satisfaction.

Sunak will make a statement to the House of Commons later setting out details of the deal.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the U.K. that shares a border with an EU member, the Republic of Ireland.

When the U.K. left the bloc in 2020, the two sides agreed to keep the Irish border free of customs posts and other checks because an open border is a key pillar of Northern Ireland’s peace process.

Instead, there are checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. That angered British unionist politicians in Belfast, who say the new trade border in the Irish Sea undermines Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.

Sunak said the new rules “removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea” by eliminating checks and paperwork for the vast majority of goods entering Northern Ireland. Only those destined to travel onward to EU member Ireland will be checked.

He said Northern Ireland’s lawmakers would be able to block any changes to EU goods laws that applied to them by using an emergency mechanism labeled the “Stormont Brake” after the home of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Von der Leyen stressed that the EU’s borderless single market would be protected by safeguards, including “IT access, labels and enforcement procedures,” and said the European Court of Justice would remain “the sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law.”

The role of the European court in resolving any disputes that arise over the rules has been the thorniest issue in the talks.