U.K. MOVES TO REWRITE POST-BREXIT TRADE RULE
The United Kingdom on Monday unveiled legislation to override parts of the Brexit deal it signed with the European Union, risking a trade war with the bloc and pitting Prime Minister Boris Johnson against opponents in his own fractured Conservative Party.
The bill seeks to hand the U.K. powers to unilaterally rewrite the bulk of the Northern Ireland protocol, which kept the region in the EU single market after Brexit, creating a customs border with mainland Great Britain. If passed, the new law would allow ministers to rip up the regulatory framework both sides agreed to in 2019 and replace it with new rules on customs checks, tax and arbitration.
“This is a reasonable, practical solution to the problems facing Northern Ireland,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement. “It will safeguard the EU Single Market and ensure there is no hard border on the island of Ireland.”
The move risks reopening divisions with the EU 2 1⁄2 years after the U.K. left the bloc, just as a unified approach to Russia following its invasion of Ukraine had bound them together again. It opens up Johnson’s administration to accusations that it’s breaking international law, and also threatens to deepen Tory splits over Europe just a week after the premier scraped through a confidence ballot that saw more than 40 percent of his party members in parliament vote against him.
The Foreign Office said in its statement that the plans are “consistent with international law” and aimed at protecting the 1998 Good Friday peace deal in Northern Ireland.
However, in Ireland, Prime Minister Micheál Martin said it was “very regrettable for a country like the U.K. to renege on an international treaty.”