UK warns of ‘big gap’ in Northern Ireland protocol talks as trade war looms
THE UK Government has warned the EU that “a big gap” remains between the two sides over how to reform the post-brexit trade protocol for Northern Ireland.
Brexit Minister Lord Frost said he was studying proposals tabled by the EU this week “constructively”, bit there was still “a long way to go”.
He was speaking as he arrived in Brussels to meet European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic at the start of weeks of negotiations over the protocol.
It came after the Financial Times reported several EU states were already girding themselves for a trade war, including retaliatory tariffs against the UK, if talks fail.
Lord Frost also appeared to give credence to claims that Boris Johnson privately planned to rewrite the protocol, despite saying in public it was a good deal.
DUP MP Ian Paisley told the
BBC on Wednesday the PM personally assured him in 2019 that he would “tear up” the protocol before MPS voted on his Brexit deal.
Mr Johnson’s former top aide Dominic Cummings also said this week that Downing Street wanted to ditch the protocol, leading to claims the UK acted in bad faith.
Asked about the claims, Lord Frost did not dismiss them, but said the Government knew some elements of the arrangements would “possibly be difficult to make work in practice” and they were always viewed as “a little bit provisional and open to review”.
But he rejected the suggestion the UK had acted in bad faith.
“Obviously the protocol was agreed at a particular moment.
“We knew that some elements of the protocol would possibly be difficult to make work in practice, and some aspects of it were left open for the discussions in 2020 and afterwards,” he said.
Agreed by the EU and UK to avoid a hard border on the island of
Ireland, the protocol effectively keeps the north in the EU single market and shifts the trade border into the Irish Sea, creating checks and trade barriers for goods moving from Great Britain to NI.
Unionists complain it has driven a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
On Wednesday, Mr Sefcovic tabled concessions that would cut checks for many products arriving in NI from Great Britain by 80 per cemnt, and halve customs paperwork. However the UK also wants an international arbitration system to police the arrangements, in instead of the European Court of
Justice, a demand too far for the EU.
Lord Frost said the role of the ECJ in policing the protocol was key.
“The governance arrangements as we have them don’t work – we need to take the court out of the system as it is now and we need to find a better way forward,” he said.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said he had “no knowledge” of Mr Paisley’s allegation that the PM signed up to an agreement he knew he was going to break.
He told Times Radio: “That has certainly never been said to me. At no stage did any Government minister, including the Prime Minister, say [that] to me.”