After vaccines, it is Northern Ireland which is fueling tensions between the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom. On Wednesday 3 February, an emergency meeting was held between British Minister of State Michael Gove, Vice-President of the European Commission, Maros Sefcovic, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster (President of the DUP , Unionist), and his deputy prime minister, Michelle O’Neill (leader of Sinn Fein, Republican party), on the “North Irish protocol”, a crucial part of the Brexit treaty, already contested by Belfast and London.
The DUP demands that it be abandoned, while Mr. Gove wants it to be the subject of substantial adjustments. Laboriously negotiated between Brussels and London, the protocol aims to preserve the peace treaty of the Good Friday agreement, by avoiding the return of a land border to the island of Ireland. Instead, it establishes a border in the Irish Sea, Northern Ireland retaining a foothold in the European internal market, while remaining a British province.
On Wednesday evening, the meeting ended with a joint communiqué, where the parties recalled their “Total commitment” to preserve the peace process, but also “To avoid disturbances in the daily life of the North Irish and a hard border on the island of Ireland”. Vice President Sefcovic and Minister Gove agreed that the EU and the UK will “Work immediately and intensely” to resolve disputes related to the protocol. A new meeting is scheduled for next week.
“Offense against unionists”
This renewed tension, five weeks after Brexit, is directly linked to the enormous “blunder” committed by the Commission on January 29. In reaction to the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which had announced a drop in its vaccine deliveries for the first quarter, and that Brussels suspected of giving priority to London, the European executive decided to set up a mechanism to control exports of Covid-19 vaccines. In doing so, he violated the Northern Irish protocol, which excludes any control over the island of Ireland. The president, Ursula von der Leyen, rectified the situation as soon as she understood her mistake. But Belfast and London denounce a precedent – especially since they had not been warned by Brussels.
The Brussels misstep gave the DUP a golden opportunity to reiterate its fierce opposition to the protocol. The Democratic Unionist Party refuses anything that, even symbolically, distances the province from the rest of the United Kingdom. On Wednesday, he launched a new campaign against the protocol, called“Offense to unionists”, without however proposing an alternative solution. In 2016, the DUP supported Brexit, but now considers itself betrayed by London. For Muiris MacCarthaigh, political scientist at Queen’s University in Belfast, “The DUP makes a big mistake by rejecting the protocol negotiated by the former Prime Minister Theresa May [il évitait l’instauration d’une frontière en mer d’Irlande], and he is now under very strong pressure [de sa base] to abandon Mr. Johnson’s. But he will not have sufficient support in Parliament at Westminster, and he is playing a dangerous game for Northern Irish political stability ”.
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