EU to threaten UK with trade war over Northern Ireland, Brexit
Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron will use one-on-one meetings to threaten sanctions over the Brexit deal in relation to Northern Ireland.
European leaders will warn Boris Johnson on Saturday they are prepared to start a trade war with Britain.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and President Macron of France will use one-to-one meetings with the prime minister in Cornwall to demand that he honours the terms of the Brexit deal in relation to Northern Ireland.
The co-ordinated diplomatic offensive at the G7 summit will be backed by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Charles Michel, president of the European Council, who will formally reiterate the European Union’s demands at a separate meeting.
No 10 said last night that Johnson would dismiss the EU’s threats and make clear he was ready to override a key part of the agreement this month unless the bloc backs down.
The prime minister has to decide whether to unilaterally extend an agreed temporary exemption that allows sausages and other processed meat to be sent from Britain to Northern Ireland. It is due to expire at the end of the month.
The EU has said it will impose trade sanctions unless an extension is agreed as part of a wider deal on implementing the Northern Ireland protocol. Sanctions could include tariffs on UK exports to the EU and suspending other areas of co-operation under the trade deal signed last year.
Johnson made clear that he was prepared to extend the exemption unilaterally even if it led to a wider confrontation with Britain’s largest trading partner. “All options are on the table,” the prime minister’s official spokesman said.
A Downing Street source said a decision would have to be made in the coming weeks and that even a short delay could result in shortages of some products in Northern Irish supermarkets.
“Supermarkets are having to make decisions on supply chains now and time is of the essence,” the source said. “Our strong preference is for a negotiated deal but we are in a tricky place. We don’t want to have to do it but that may be where we end up.”
Johnson said the checks on goods being sent from Great Britain to Northern Ireland needed to be reviewed. “You will understand that there are ways of enforcing the protocol, ways of making it work, that may be excessively burdensome,” he told the BBC. “I just give you one statistic: 20 per cent of the checks conducted across the whole of the perimeter of the EU are now done in Northern Ireland, three times as many as happen in Rotterdam.” He added: “I think we can sort it out.”
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, criticised the EU’s stance on the agreement. “The EU must be less purist, more pragmatic and more flexible in the implementation of it,” he said. “The ball is very much in the EU’s court in relation to that. The bottom line for us is that the threat, the risk, to the Good Friday agreement comes from the approach the EU has taken, a particularly purist approach.”
However, Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, struck a more emollient tone after meeting Micheal Martin, the Irish prime minister. “The protocol is there to uphold the Belfast agreement in all its dimensions and it is important that the east-west dimensions are respected,” Gove said. “I believe there is a willingness within pragmatic figures within the European Union to make sure that we can make these arrangements work so that they do not impact adversely on the lives of people across communities in Northern Ireland and I know that the Irish government is using its best endeavours in order to proceed in a pragmatic and constructive way.”
Martin said he believed that the Brexit withdrawal agreement and protocol offered solutions to “[work out] these issues”. He added: “I think discussions should pick up momentum, they did it before, prior to the Brexit deal being signed off, so in my view it is in the capacity of both the UK government and the European Union to arrive at an agreement here.”
World leaders were met by the prime minister and his wife, Carrie Johnson, in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, on Friday for the first day of the G7 summit, which will end tomorrow. Last night they attended a reception at the Eden Project with the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
The Times
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