UK’S call to change post-brexit rules irks EU

LONDON — The British government said Wednesday that post-brexit trade rules it negotiated with the European Union “cannot go on” and need a rewrite, straining tense U.K.-EU relations.

The government said Britain would be justified in unilaterally suspending the legally binding Brexit agreement but had decided not to do so.

Since the U.K. left the EU’S economic embrace at the end of 2020, relations have soured over trade arrangements for Northern Ireland, the only part of the U.K. that has a land border with the 27-nation bloc. The divorce deal the two sides agreed to before Britain’s departure means customs and border checks must be conducted on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

The regulations are intended to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, a key pillar of Northern Ireland’s peace process. But they have angered Northern Ireland’s British unionists, who say they amount to a border in the Irish Sea and weaken ties with the rest of the U.K.

Britain accuses the EU of taking a “purist” approach to the rules that is causing unnecessary red tape for businesses.

“Put very simply, we cannot go on as we are,” Brexit minister David Frost said Wednesday in the House of Lords.

Frost said “the circumstances exist to justify the use of Article 16,” an emergency brake in the agreement allowing for it to be suspended by one side in extreme circumstances.

The EU says Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government knew full well that there would be checks when it signed the Brexit deal.

Frost said Britain was seeking a “standstill period” in which grace periods that are due to expire in the next few months would be maintained. Last month, the two sides gave themselves breathing time by delaying until the end of September a ban on chilled meats such as sausages from England, Scotland and Wales from going to Northern Ireland.