‘Be realistic’: EU’s olive branch to UK on post-Brexit trade
THE EU has unveiled a series of proposals that would slash the red tape burden on Irish Sea trade created by Brexit’s Northern Ireland Protocol.
The European Commission measures would see an 80% reduction in checks envisaged for retail agri-food products arriving from Great Britain.
Proposed changes to the contentious post-Brexit trading arrangements include removing the prospect of certain British produce, such as Cumberland sausages, being banned from export to Northern Ireland.
The plan also includes a 50% reduction in customs paperwork required to move products into the North from Great Britain. More products and companies would be exempt from customs tariffs as a result of expanding trusted-trader arrangements and a concept that differentiates between goods destined for the North and those ‘at risk’ of onward transportation into the Republic.
The EU has also offered to legislate to ensure no disruption to the supply line of medicines from Great Britain to the North.
The commission has also pledged to enhance engagement with stakeholders in Northern Ireland, including politicians, business representatives and other members of civic society. However, the proposals contained in four separate papers published by the bloc yesterday evening do not offer any concession on a key UK government demand to remove the oversight role for the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The EU said the proposals were based on flexibilities inherent within the protocol but also went a bit further. In return for the scaled-back checking regime, the EU has asked for safeguards to be implemented to provide extra assurances that products said to be destined for the North do not end up crossing the Irish border.
Those include labelling of certain products to make clear they are for sale in the UK only, enhanced monitoring of supply chain movements and access to real-time trade flow information.
The EU said access to the realtime data, and the construction of new checking facilities at ports in Northern Ireland, were commitments the UK had already made but was yet to deliver on.
One EU official described the package of measures as a ‘very substantial, very meaningful and very impactful set of ideas’ aimed at addressing practical problems with the implementation of the protocol. The official said it went ‘far beyond tinkering around the edges’. While the range of measures would go some way to reducing everyday friction on trade caused by the protocol, they do not address a UK demand over the role of the ECJ.
UK Brexit minister David Frost has made clear the removal of the ECJ’s oversight function in policing the protocol is a red line for the British government if a compromise deal is to be struck.
‘The problem with the protocol at the moment is that EU law, with the ECJ as the enforcer of it, is applied in Northern Ireland without any sort of democratic process,’ he told broadcasters.
Under the terms of the protocol, which was agreed by the UK and EU as part of the 2020 Withdrawal Agreement, the ECJ would be the final arbitrator in any future trade dispute between the two parties on the operation of the protocol.
The UK now wants to remove that provision and replace it with an independent arbitration process, but the European Commission has insisted it will not move on the ECJ issue. An EU official pointed out that Northern Ireland would be unable to retain unfettered single market access, a key provision of the protocol, if the arrangement is not subject to oversight by European judges.
The official urged the UK to be ‘realistic and pragmatic’ and said if it stuck to its demand on the ECJ, it would create a ‘very big gap’ between the respective positions of London and Brussels. Mr Frost has warned the UK could move to suspend parts of the protocol, by triggering the Article 16 mechanism, if an acceptable compromise cant be reached.
‘Very impactful set of ideas’