EU spurns Johnson’s Brexit pleas
LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson early yesterday urged European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to consider seriously Britain’s proposals to change what he called the ‘‘unsustainable’’ way a Brexit deal is governing trade with Northern Ireland.
Since it completed its exit from the EU at the end of last year, Britain’s ties with the bloc have reached new lows, with both sides accusing each other of acting in bad faith over an agreement for postBrexit trade with Northern Ireland.
London accused Brussels of being too purist, or legalistic, in interpreting what the deal means for some goods moving from Britain to its province of Northern Ireland. The EU insisted it was adhering to the deal, which Johnson signed last year.
Britain proposed on Thursday to renegotiate parts of the Northern Ireland protocol that govern the movement of goods such as chilled meats, and to dispense with EU oversight of the accord.
The EU has rejected the demand to renegotiate, with von der Leyen repeating the bloc’s message on Twitter, saying: ‘‘The EU will continue to be creative and flexible within the Protocol framework. But we will not renegotiate.’’
Johnson spoke to van der Leyen early yesterday.
‘‘The prime minister set out that the way the protocol was currently operating was unsustainable. He said that solutions could not be found through the existing mechanisms of the protocol and that’s why we’d set out proposals for significant changes to it,’’ Johnson’s spokesman said.
Johnson urged the EU to ‘‘look
❛ The EU will continue to be creative and flexible within the Protocol framework. But we will not renegotiate Ursula von der Leyen
at the proposals seriously and work with the UK on them,’’ saying this would put the UKEU relationship on a better footing.
Britain drafted the proposals in one paper that it issued on Thursday to try to force stuttering negotiations forward on making the socalled protocol work better.
The protocol addresses how to preserve the delicate peace brought to the province by the USbrokered 1998 Good Friday peace accord — by maintaining an open border — without opening a back door through Ireland to the EU’s single market of 450 million people. It requires checks on goods between the British mainland and Northern Ireland, part of the EU customs area. These are burdensome to companies and an anathema to unionists fiercely supportive of the province remaining part of the UK. — Reuters