Britain can respond by invoking Article 16
By drawing up plans to respond forcibly to EU threats of imposing punitive sanctions if it triggers Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol, the Government aims to show it will not be cowed by warnings of a trade war from Brussels. In what appears to be a complete breakdown in any hopes of a settlement to the dispute, ministers are ready to retaliate against what they regard as an unrealistic and at times vindictive EU policy of refusing to accept significant changes in the protocol, which they view as part of a strategy to both punish the UK for its Brexit decision and to dissuade other countries from leaving the bloc.
Their plan will include setting up the UK’S own customs checks between the province and British mainland, in place of the current EU administered checks which have caused interminable bottlenecks and seen many foodstuffs disappearing from shelves in Northern Irish shops.
For its part the EU has been threatening to suspend its trade agreement with Britain and bring in new tariffs and restrictions on British goods, as well as to severely disrupt the supply chain for British imports from continental Europe, through new and lengthy border checks. However, the Government is determined to fight such moves with its own measures. New legislation to give effect to the changes is expected to be tabled in the Commons before Christmas, alongside formal notification that Article 16 is being triggered.
The issue is constitutional, as well as economic, because the final arbiter of the protocol is the European Court of Justice, a body that the majority of Britons thought they’d seen the back of.
The EU has consistently sought to frustrate demands to end the protocol’s deleterious effects, with the result that Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, has insisted that using Article 16 may now be the only way forward. The article allows either side to suspend the protocol unilaterally if it believes its operation is causing serious “economic, societal or environmental difficulties”.
Thus triggering Article 16 is not illegal, as the critics claim. It is part of the protocol to be used unilaterally to address major problems in relationships between the two parts of Northern Ireland. Furthermore, the idea that the UK has any interest in wrecking the peace process in the province has always been at best wrong-headed and, at worst, insulting.