LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) – Legislation Britain will introduce on Monday to scrap some of the rules governing post-Brexit trade with Northern Ireland will not breach international law, Secretary Brandon Lewis said on Sunday. of British state in charge of the file.
“The legislation we will introduce tomorrow is within the law; what we are going to do is legal and correct,” he told Sky News.
On Britain’s exit from the European Union, Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed to a protocol that effectively left Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market and customs union in order to preserve the open border with the Republic of Ireland, provided for in the Good Friday Peace Agreement.
Irish Sinn Fein, the nationalist party that won historic victory in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections last month, said on Sunday that Britain would “undoubtedly” break the law by imposing changes unilateral to the protocol.
Britain’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, however, said the protocol needed to be changed as it “fundamentally undermines” the Good Friday Agreement.
According to Brandon Lewis, this protocol disrupts the lives of the people of Northern Ireland, prevents the functioning of government institutions and does not respect the internal market of the United Kingdom.
The leader declined to say how the protocol would be changed, but said the government would establish the legal basis on which it is presenting the legislation.
Sinn Fein chair Mary Lou McDonald said London could work with Dublin and Brussels to improve enforcement of the protocol.
“There is a will here, there is a will to engage from the European Commission, but the UK government has refused to engage,” she told Sky News from Dublin.
“He has not been constructive, he has sought a destructive course and is now proposing to introduce legislation which will undoubtedly violate international law.”
(Report Paul Sandle, French version Benjamin Mallet)