Brussels to offer new Brexit deal for NI

Bloc makes concessions over checks on goods but insists European Court still has oversight in province

BRUSSELS will offer a new Brexit deal on Northern Ireland today, but is set to reject demands to strip European judges of their role in the province.

The European Commission will launch its proposals to resolve the dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol, once the plans are approved in a College of Commissioners meeting.

Under the proposals from Brussels, up to 50 per cent of customs checks on goods would be lifted, and the figure is “even higher” for controls on meat and plants entering NI from the rest of the UK. EU officials are expected to say that they can cut the checks on British goods exported to NI, if in return they are given real-time access to UK trade databases to police products that cross into the Republic of Ireland.

An EU diplomat said: “The number of checks will go down massively. This is the best way to cut checks, short of a Swiss-style alignment agreement.”

The offer has been likened to the “maximum facilitation” plan originally proposed by Brexiteers but rejected by Brussels. It comes after Lord Frost said in Lisbon yesterday: “We will obviously consider [the EU proposals] seriously, fully, and positively. But – I repeat – if we are going to get to a solution we must, collectively, deliver significant change.”

The Brexit minister repeated his call for the oversight of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of the implementation of EU law in NI to be replaced with international arbitration modelled on the Brexit trade deal. He suggested that an “entirely new” protocol was needed and that failure to overhaul the treaty would be a “historic misjudgment”.

But EU sources warned that the British demand to remove the role of European judges was a red line and could cost NI its access to the Single Market.

Last night, Irish deputy prime minister Leo Varadkar said the British demands were “very hard to accept” and insisted that the ECJ had to be the body that interprets European law. The deal on offer could see the creation of a “green lane” for goods entering NI from Great Britain and a separate “red lane” with more customs controls for goods going beyond the province.

The official said: “Instead of doing a form for every item in the truck you will be able to do a form for the whole truck. One for the entire load. It is a very pragmatic solution.” One diplomat likened the plan to the “max fac” strategy, which employed technological solutions to minimise the need for physical checks.

The diplomat stressed that the difference in the new deal was that it would use technology that exists now, whereas “max fac” was criticised in the EU for “magical thinking” because of its reliance on technology yet to be developed.

Lord Frost had reservations about granting Brussels access to the data on trade crossing the Irish Sea, but his Commission counterpart, Maros Sefcovic, has agreed to limit the scope of accessible information. Britain is working on a bespoke system for a database for real-time information on safety and security declarations on shipments into Northern Ireland, and a second system that details the movement of goods into Ireland from ports in the province.

An EU diplomat said: “We always needed access to these databases, but now with these new flexibilities that are being offered it is a must-have.”

The EU proposals also include a “national identity goods” clause allowing the continued sale of British sausages in Northern Ireland, despite EU rules restricting the sale of chilled meats from non-eu countries.

And the bloc will change EU Single Market rules on medicines to protect the ability of the NHS to maintain supplies of cheap generic medicines.

The Protocol put a customs border between Britain and the province to prevent border checks between NI and the Republic of Ireland, which could jeopardise the peace process.

‘Instead of doing a form for every item in the truck you will be able to do a form for the whole truck’

The final battle of Brexit is about to be joined. In his thoughtful and welljudged speech in Lisbon, Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, indicated that without significant progress on the operation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, the UK will take unilateral action to repudiate it, possibly within weeks. This is not an argument about sausages or empty supermarket shelves, though they matter to consumers in the province. Fundamentally, it is a dispute about sovereignty, territorial integrity and democracy.

Almost from the moment the UK voted to leave the EU, Brussels used the ambivalent status of Northern Ireland as a means of leverage in talks about the final Withdrawal Agreement. Because the EU’S only land border with the UK lies on the island of Ireland, the Commission and some member states, notably France, have exploited its troubled past to their own advantage.

Theresa May should never have allowed the fate of Northern Ireland, an integral part of the Union, to be a bargaining chip. To avoid a hard border in Ireland she would have permitted the whole of the UK to retain alignment with single market rules as a fall-back position. Boris Johnson decided that a customs border down the Irish Sea was defensible and he had a big enough majority to override the objections of the province’s Unionist MPS.

Britain considered this to be a considerable compromise agreed for the greater good, and assumed (and hoped) the EU would allow the protocol to operate flexibly. But it has proved to be disruptive and divisive. Unionists feel that it has changed their relationship with the rest of the UK. They remain subject to the European Court despite no longer being a member of the EU and can have rules imposed by a legislature over which they have no say.

Given that the EU insisted a hard border on the island was a breach of the 1998 Belfast Agreement they must also acknowledge that changing the constitutional status of Northern Ireland within the UK is a similar infringement. There might have been a pragmatic way to make this arrangement work but the EU either does not understand the issues or is wilfully ignoring them.

At the very least, the EU court should no longer have a role in the laws of our country. Lord Frost has put forward wording for a revised protocol and the EU will reply today. It is to be hoped they now recognise the seriousness of the situation.