EU chief mocks Windsor framework
AS Rishi Sunak hailed his Brexit deal that “takes back control” of Northern Ireland, the EU’s chief negotiator told a private meeting in Brussels a vastly different story of who controls the province.
Debriefing the European Parliament’s Brexit committees on the freshly-minted “Windsor Framework”, Maros Sefcovic said the Prime Minister’s pact was simply designed to avoid negative headlines in the British press, and would not hand back full sovereignty over the region.
The Slovak diplomat, not one to bite his tongue, poured cold water over any suggestion the UK had secured an effective veto over new European laws that affect Northern Ireland, and said the bloc’s court would still rule supreme.
Of the Stormont Brake, Mr Sunak claims will allow politicians a veto on new EU rules applying to the province, Mr Sefcovic assured MEPs that Brussels would have powers to react to any decision with trade sanctions, such as customs levies against British exports.
The mechanism was created to address Unionist concerns about the imposition of Brussels regulations over which the assembly has no say.
“This [Stormont Brake] is very much limited in the scope, and it’s really under very strict conditions,” Mr Sefcovic told them, according to a recording obtained by The Sunday Telegraph.
“On top of that, if we do not feel convinced, we have our joint bodies to deal with this issue, or eventually this case could be presented to the arbitration.
“If we don’t feel the third parties perspective, we will have the possibility to take limited remedial measures because we can tell them it’s affecting the functioning of our single market.” His words will not offer any comfort to members of the Democratic Unionist Party and the European Research Group, who are both holding off on deciding whether to back the deal.
The European Commission vicepresident’s claim that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) still oversees swathes of EU rules that continue to apply in the province will only make the Prime Minister’s job harder.
“Be under no impression that there will be a diminishing of the role of the European Court of Justice,” he said.
“We’ve been very clear from the beginning until the end, the role of the ECJ as the sole and final arbiter of EU law stays in place.”
The Eurocrat said the political agreement brokered between Mr Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission’s president, was simply designed to prevent future disputes over EU rules in the province from reaching a “level that would generate political headlines”.
He also urged MEPs to ignore various claims by UK ministers to sell the new agreement as a move away from the ECJ in the British newspapers.
“We’ll see what we hear from the UK press,” he said.