The UK government has published draft legislation which will allow ministers to override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol within the Brexit deal with the EU.
The Protocol is the mechanism within the Brexit deal which avoids a hard border on the island of Ireland by keeping Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market for goods while Great Britain is not. This means that checks need to take place on some goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, effectively creating a trade border in the Irish Sea.
The UK and unionists say that these checks on some goods travelling on this trajectory must be stopped, since it undermines Northern Ireland’s position in the union and threatens peace in the region.
Local businesses which import goods from Great Britain have faced multiple issues around the new checks, with food and horticulture products facing the most intensive customs procedures.
Meanwhile, Northern Irish exporters have benefited from the Protocol since they have retained frictionless access to the EU single market.
The Protocol has indirectly led to Northern Ireland being without a functioning government, after the Democratic Unionist Party [DUP] refused to enter a power-sharing executive with Irish nationalist party, Sinn Féin, until action on the Protocol is taken.
However, Brussels continues to insist that unilateral action would break international law and is expected to pursue legal action this week.
The new Northern Ireland Protocol Bill proposes a new system of “green lanes” and “red lanes” for goods entering the region. Items being transported into Northern Ireland from Great Britain which are destined to remain in Northern Ireland will be passed through green lanes, meaning that no checks are carried out and minimal levels of paperwork are completed.
Anything that is intended to be transported over the border into the Republic of Ireland or the wider EU would pass through the red lane and continue to subject to checks and heavy paperwork.
Ministers in the UK have said that agreeing changes to the Protocol with the EU would be its preferred solution over unilateral action and that it has been acting in “good faith” in the talks, but talks have not yet yielded a breakthrough and the current developments at Stormont have required a failsafe option to be put in place.
UK foreign secretary Liz Truss told the BBC: “We've been acting in good faith in these negotiations, but the fundamental issues that are affecting political stability in Northern Ireland are in the text of the Protocol and what we need is the EU to agree to change the text of the Protocol.
“Otherwise, the negotiations won't succeed. We've reached a dead end, because we can't change those core issues around customs and around VAT that are losing us the consent of the unionist community in Northern Ireland.”
Meanwhile, German chancellor Olaf Scholz called the UK’s decision to introduce the Bill “regrettable”.
Scholz said: “Britain has taken a very regrettable decision that goes against all the agreements between the EU and Britain. It is also unjustified because the European Commission made many pragmatic proposals.”
Elsewhere, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has urged the UK to get back to the negotiating table and resume talks “in good faith” with the EU.
The EU has since published its own proposals to simplify the workings of the Northern Ireland Protocol, insisting that the UK's plans would lead to a greater burden of paperwork and bureaucracy.
However, the UK believes it is the EU's proposed solution that would make the current trading situation worse and insist that it does not differ from proposals that have been brought to the negotiating table before.
Image taken from Wikimedia Commons
