Ulster braces for EU backlash as it throws open Irish sea border
NORTHERN Ireland last night ordered a halt to Brexit checks on agriculture and food products arriving across the sea from Britain.
DUP agriculture minister Edwin Poots said officials would stop carrying out the inspections required under the Northern Ireland Protocol at midnight.
Opposition parties reacted with fury, insisting the civil service has a duty to comply with Stormont’s legal obligations to carry out checks under the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU.
Irish foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney said the decision would be a ‘breach of international law’.
It was unclear last night whether the senior civil servant in Mr Poots’s department, Anthony Harbinson, would comply with the order.
The agriculture minister said legal advice he had sought on the issue supported his view that he was entitled to stop the checks.
The move came after he failed last week to secure the wider approval of the Stormont Executive to continue checks on agri-food produce
‘Playing politics with legal obligations’
arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said last week the UK would not step in if Mr Poots moved to halt the checks.
Under the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol, the Province is meant to retain full access to both the UK market and the European Single Market.
As part of the deal, Brussels insisted on checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK to ensure the route did not become a back door into the Single Market.
But the onerous checks imposed by the EU have been blamed for causing serious disruption to trade within the UK, as well as sparking political tensions in Northern Ireland.
The DUP had set a February 21 deadline for the lifting of EU checks on goods arriving from Great Britain.
Mr Poots said the legal advice stated ‘there is presently no executive approval for SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) checks’.
He added: ‘The implementation of SPS checks requires Executive approval. A decision to initiate or continue such checks could not be validly taken in the absence of Executive approval. The advice concluded that I can direct the checks to cease in the absence of Executive approval.
‘I have now issued a formal instruction to my permanent secretary to halt all checks that were not in place on December 31, 2020, from midnight.
‘I will prepare a paper for Executive consideration in the near future to seek agreement on a way forward.’
Mr Coveney suggested the DUP was ‘playing politics with legal obligations’.
He told the Irish parliament: ‘If a political decision is taken by a minister in Northern Ireland to stop all checks in ports on goods coming across the Irish Sea, coming into Northern Ireland, that is effectively a breach of international law.’
Sinn Fein deputy first minister Michelle O’Neill said: ‘This stunt is an attempt by the DUP to unlawfully interfere with domestic and international law.’
Whitehall sources said the move was ‘nuclear’ and the UK Government had not been given immediate prior warning of Mr Poots’s announcement.
A government spokesman in London said: ‘The operation of checks is a matter for the Northern Ireland Executive.
We have been consistently clear that there are significant problems with the protocol which urgently need fixing, which is why we are in intensive talks with the EU to find solutions.’
A spokesman added that Miss Truss would speak to European Commission vicepresident Maros Sefcovic today. A diplomatic source said: ‘Miss Truss is talking to Mr Sefcovic and is focused on finding practical solutions to the problems created by the protocol and protecting peace and political stability in Northern Ireland.’
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said last night it was a matter for the Northern Ireland executive.
‘It is something within their legal remit,’ he told ITV. ‘But one of the frustrations is this… is something we’ve been saying to the EU for some time was the kind of thing that we could see happening.
‘It’s exactly the sort of thing that we have been warning about in terms of the stability of the Executive and the decisions the Executive ministers will take in order to make sure that products can move from Great Britain to Northern Ireland in a way that they always have done.’
‘Protecting peace and stability’