Northern Ireland has been without a government since February 2022, due to a boycott by unionists from the Democratic Unionist Party. alco81 / stock.adobe.com
The British government pushed back the deadline for holding elections in Northern Ireland on Thursday to January 2024, which is facing a political deadlock linked to post-Brexit provisions in the British province.
Northern Ireland has not had a government since February 2022, due to the boycott of the unionists of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who denounce in the post-Brexit controls on goods from Great Britain a threat to the place of the province within the United Kingdom.
There is no indication that new elections will change the situation
Despite successive ultimatums and apparent progress in negotiations between London and Brussels on this subject, London has not succeeded in convincing the DUP to participate in an executive and there is no indication that new elections will change the situation. Legislation introduced on Thursday will “extend the period of executive formation, to allow time and space for NI (Northern Irish) parties to work together on a return to governmentLondon said in a statement.
The deadline is now January 18, 2024, the previous deadline of January 19 having expired without result. The government has indicated that elections could be organized “at any timeby then. The DUP conditions its participation in local institutions – where powers must be shared between the DUP and the nationalist Sinn Fein party, which came out on top in the last elections in May – to a profound modification of the Northern Irish protocol, which introduces these post -Brexit.
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“Elections in the coming weeks would be neither helpful nor welcome“, conceded the Minister for Northern Ireland in the British government Chris Heaton-Harris. At the heart of the blockage, the Northern Irish protocol, negotiated at the time of Brexit, de facto keeps the province – which has the only British land border with the EU – in the single European market.
The text aims both to preserve the 1998 peace agreement which ended three decades of bloody conflict, by avoiding the return of a hard border, and to protect the integrity of the single European market. Chris Heaton-Harris met on Wednesday in Brussels with European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic. Long acrimonious, the tone of the discussions has softened considerably in recent weeks and the British press is reporting significant progress on customs issues.
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