He argued that his government’s “prior and higher legal commitment” was to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which brought peace and stability to Northern Ireland.
Agreements for Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK that shares a land border with an EU nation (Ireland), have proven to be the thorniest issue in the UK’s divorce from the bloc. At the heart of the dispute is the Northern Ireland Protocol, which now regulates trade ties between Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland, part of the EU.
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Britain and the EU agreed in their Brexit agreement that the Irish land border would remain free of customs and other controls because an open border was a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Ireland. of the North.
Instead, to protect the EU’s single market, there are now controls on some goods, such as meat and eggs, which enter Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
But the deal has been shown to be politically detrimental to Johnson because it treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK. The Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland has refused to return to the region’s power-sharing government until the protocol is discarded or substantially changed.
The bill to overturn this agreement is expected to face opposition in Parliament, including members of Johnson’s Conservative ranks. Critics say unilaterally changing the protocol would be illegal and would hurt the UK’s position with other countries because it is part of a treaty considered binding by international law.
In Brussels, Sefcovic said the protocol was “the only solution we could find together to protect the hard-earned gains of the peace process in Northern Ireland”.
He added that the EU remains open to talks with the British government to find a solution to the dispute.
AP