DUBLIN, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Friday he hoped talks between Britain and the European Union on rules governing trade with the EU would resume in the coming weeks. North Ireland.
Under the Northern Ireland protocol, which is part of the Brexit agreement signed in January 2020 by London and Brussels, Northern Ireland, a British province, continues to belong de facto to the single European market and to the union. customs to preserve the free movement of goods with the neighboring Republic of Ireland and the 1998 peace agreement which ended the conflict in Northern Ireland.
This device involves checks on certain goods from Great Britain which the British government is asking to end.
The new British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, at the origin of a bill providing for a reversal of the protocol when she was Minister of Foreign Affairs, said recently that she favored a negotiated solution while hoping that Brussels would ratify certain initiatives already taken unilaterally by London.
The European Union for its part presented a year ago a set of measures aimed at providing more flexibility in the implementation of the protocol.
Speaking to Irish public radio and television (RTE) on Friday, Simon Coveney said he had recently had private conversations with Prime Minister Micheal Martin with the new British government which suggest that a “new phase of dialogue may more concrete” could take place after the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, which is to take place on Monday in London.
“I have to say with measured optimism that we could see in the next few weeks the beginning of an honest effort to try to settle some issues that have been pending for too long,” said the head of Irish diplomacy.
“But we are very clear, both from the Irish government side and from the EU side, that this requires a compromise from the UK side as well as the EU side,” he added. (Padraic Halpin report, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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