by Kylie MacLellan and Elizabeth Piper
LONDON (Reuters) – The British government on Tuesday expressed its intention to introduce a bill to amend the “Northern Irish protocol” in the coming weeks that would de facto reverse part of the Brexit agreement and risk causing a new crisis with the European Union.
In a statement to Parliament, Foreign Office Secretary Liz Truss said the new law would make it easier to move goods between Britain and Northern Ireland and give London more power to oversee existing laws. in the province.
The Northern Ireland protocol has been a bone of contention between London and Brussels since British Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed it in 2019 to allow the deal to be finalized on Britain’s exit from the European Union.
This protocol provides for the establishment of customs controls on certain goods transiting from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, in order to prevent Brexit from leading to the re-establishment of a physical border with Ireland, which has remained in the EU.
But far from calming tensions, this device led to disruptions in the supply of Northern Ireland and awakened political tensions threatening the peace agreement of 1998, the pro-British unionists denouncing the establishment of a difference de facto between the province and the rest of the UK.
Liz Truss assured several times before the House of Commons on Tuesday that the bill prepared by the government would not call into question London’s international commitments, and that negotiations were continuing with Brussels to find a solution.
The EU has repeatedly warned against unilaterally challenging the protocol and European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic, in charge of negotiations with London, said on Tuesday that such a move “raises significant concerns ” and would be “not acceptable”.
“If the UK decides to go ahead with a bill removing constituent parts of the protocol, as announced today by the UK government, the EU will have to react with all the means at its disposal. “, warned Maros Sefcovic in a press release.
PRESSURE FROM NORTHERN IRISH UNIONISTS
Part of the overhaul to the protocol that Liz Truss has mentioned would create a dual regulatory regime to ensure that goods sent to Northern Ireland and destined to remain there are not subject to unnecessary administrative burdens.
“The bill will remove regulatory barriers for goods made to British standards sold in Northern Ireland. Businesses will have the choice of complying with British or EU standards under a new dual regulatory regime,” the Commission said. head of British diplomacy.
“He will continue to ensure that there is no physical border on the island of Ireland.”
The introduction of this bill responds to a request from Boris Johnson, who said on Monday that his government must have some form of “assurance” that it will be able to question parts of the Brexit agreement. posing a problem.
While acknowledging that the Northern Irish protocol poses difficulties, a Labor opposition spokesman for international issues, Stephen Doughty, said the UK must act calmly and responsibly.
“It is deeply disturbing that the Foreign Secretary is introducing a bill apparently designed to break the treaty which the government itself signed just two years ago, which will not solve the problems in Northern Ireland for a long time. term, and that will rather undermine trust,” he said.
The result of the elections in Northern Ireland, where the Catholic nationalists of Sinn Fein, favorable to the reunification of Ireland, came out on top ten days ago, for the first time in the history of the province, accentuated pressure on Boris Johnson.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the main pro-British party, has made its participation in a power-sharing government, provided for in the Good Friday peace agreement, conditional on a modification of the Northern Irish protocol.
Its leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, said Tuesday that Liz Truss’s proposal was going in the right direction, but he said he was waiting to decide definitively that it would translate into concrete and rapid action. “We don’t want a border in the Irish Sea anymore,” he warned.
(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan and Elizabeth Piper; with Padraic Halpin in Dublin, Andrew MacAskill, William James, Muvija M and James Davey in London; French version Bertrand Boucey and Tangi Salaün, editing by Sophie Louet)