The British Government has presented today in Parliament the bill that aims to unilaterally annul parts of the protocol signed with the European Union on Northern Ireland that is part of the ‘Brexit’ agreement.
Among other measures, the new legislation aims to eliminate the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) over disputes related to Northern Ireland.
The text presented by the British Foreign Minister, Liz Truss, contemplates the creation of a “green lane” that would exempt goods from Great Britain destined for consumption in Northern Ireland from customs control, although it maintained a “red lane” reserved for products destined for the Republic of Ireland as part of the Community single market.
Likewise, it proposes that companies that only trade with Northern Ireland can choose whether they are governed by Community or British regulations, and also provides that in that province the subsidies and tax exemptions in force in the rest of the British territory can be applied.
The main argument of the conservative executive of Prime Minister Boris Johnson to promote the law is that the current application of the protocol undermines the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland in 1998, by preventing the formation of a government of shared power between Unionists and Republicans, as stipulated in said document.
“This bill will uphold the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement and support political stability in Northern Ireland. It will end the untenable situation where the Northern Irish are treated differently from the rest of the UK, it will protect the supremacy of our courts and our territorial integrity,” Truss said at the bill’s launch.
For London, the proposal is a “practical and reasonable solution to the problems facing Northern Ireland”, although he is willing to withdraw from the project if the negotiations with the EU produce a result acceptable to all parties.
Speaking to the press in Brussels, at about the same time that Boris Johnson’s government was presenting its bill in London, the vice president of the Commission responsible for interinstitutional (and post-‘Brexit’) relations, Maros Sefcovic, stated that it is with “significant concern” that Brussels takes note of the British decision to proceed with legislation that “goes beyond” the “core elements” of the Protocol, “an integral part of the Withdrawal Agreement” negotiated extensively between the EU and the United States UNITED.
Reiterating that “the European Union will not renegotiate the Protocol”, since this “is not realistic”, since during the long negotiations with London on the Withdrawal Agreement “no viable alternative solution to this delicate balance was found” and “any renegotiation would simply bring more legal uncertainty to people and companies in Northern Ireland”, Sefcovic once again lamented this “unilateral action” by London which, he stressed, “is detrimental to mutual trust”.
Source: Observadora
