Boris Johnson becomes prime minister Two years ago This week and later won an election that promised to “complete Brexit.”
On Wednesday, his minister in charge of EU relations, David Frost, laid out a plan to rework the core part of the Brexit agreement the two negotiated and agreed to with Brussels. “The difficulties we encountered in our operations Northern Ireland The agreement is now the main obstacle to establishing a good relationship with the EU, Frost told the House of Lords. He regrets that this relationship is “challenged by the law from time to time” and “characterized by disagreement and mistrust.”
A more relaxed relationship full of goodwill between the two parties is unlikely to happen anytime soon, and Frost’s statement explains why.
EU officials are annoyed by the government’s claims that it did not foresee changes in trade between the UK and Northern Ireland. With an attachment over 31 pages, the agreement negotiated by Frost and Johnson lists every EU law applicable to Northern Ireland, including customs and animal health checks.
Brussels is also tired of what it thinks is that it refuses to recognize the EU’s efforts to soften the agreement, such as extending the grace period to allow Chilled meat continues to move Negotiations between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and a commitment to rewrite the European Union’s drug law.
This week, the two sides also had a dispute over the issue of Gibraltar, when British Foreign Secretary Dominique Raab criticized the European Union’s proposal to negotiate a new agreement on the movement of goods and people on the territory.
Against this hopeless background, Frost’s request to rewrite the Northern Ireland Agreement encountered obstacles, and the EU immediately ruled out any possibility of renegotiation.
Many of the government’s latest ideas have been put forward and rejected before. A credible trader’s plan will rely on British truck drivers being honest about the destination of their cargo, which is right “Alternative arrangement“Promoted by Conservative backbenchers during the parliamentary Brexit war. These ideas were rejected because the EU single market operates according to rules rather than trust.
Tensions will heat up during the technical negotiations in the summer, but are unlikely to reach a boiling point before the fall. The truce for frozen meat will expire on September 30.
If the government fails to renegotiate the agreement, it says it is prepared to escalate the battle. Frost threatened to trigger Article 16, which is an emergency brake that allows either party to suspend the part of the agreement that “causes serious economic, social or environmental difficulties…or trade diversion.”
At present, the government is more willing to continue the conversation. It wants to keep the threat on the table, but triggering Article 16 will be a high-risk gamble, as the EU will fight back with retaliatory tariffs and plunge the relationship into a downward spiral.
If this happens, the government has made it clear who should be blamed. In an unusual scoring exercise, Order document issued on Wednesday Believe that Frost’s negotiators have no choice but to accept the Northern Ireland agreement.
The blame is shared among Theresa May, Rebellious councillor And the EU, but not Johnson, he Promise that there will be no checks Between the UK and Northern Ireland.
