After months of difficult negotiations, the British government and the European Union have reached an agreement on post-Brexit controls in Northern Ireland. “It’s the start of a new chapter in our relationship”British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said, announcing the deal at a press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Windsor, on the western outskirts of London.
Earlier in the day, on Twitterr, Mme von der Leyen had already said that he had “can’t wait to turn the page and open a new chapter with our partner and friend”, the United Kingdom.
The Windsor deal is expected to drastically reduce the customs checks needed on goods from Britain arriving in Northern Ireland. It will also reduce the application of EU regulations in the British province.
“We have agreed on solid guarantees (…) which will protect the integrity of the European single market”insisted Ursula von der Leyen. “And most importantly, it protects the hard-won peace through the Good Friday Agreement” which put an end to the conflict between Unionists, especially Protestants, and Republicans, mostly Catholics, and whose 25e anniversary will be celebrated in April, she added.
Political blockage
Signed in 2020, the Northern Ireland Protocol, negotiated after Brexit by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, regulates the movement of goods between Northern Ireland, which has the only land border with the European Union, and the rest of the UK. This protocol wanted to avoid a land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland which would risk weakening the peace concluded in 1998 after three bloody decades, while protecting the single European market.
But it posed practical problems by in particular imposing customs controls on goods from Great Britain arriving in Northern Ireland, even if they were intended to remain in the British province.
The protocol has thus generated tensions between the European Union and London, but it has also become an internal problem for Rishi Sunak, who faces opposition from Brexit hardliners and from the unionists of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), fiercely opposed to any questioning of Northern Ireland’s membership of the United Kingdom. The latter refuse any de facto application of European law in the British province and have blocked the functioning of the local executive for a year.
After the announcement of the agreement between London and Brussels, the leader of the DUP announced that he “will take the time to study the details and evaluate the agreement”.
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Before her meeting with Rishi Sunak, Ursula von der Leyen had met Charles III, an interview criticized by some who lament that the king finds himself embroiled in such contentious political discussions. ‘The King is happy to meet any foreign leader if he is visiting the UK and it is the Government’s advice that he does so’responded Buckingham Palace in a statement.
