UK rejects Northern Ireland protocols as ‘needlessly harming’

Britain demands significant changes to Northern Ireland Protocol, threatening to activate Article 16 and dramatically escalate trade tensions.

Fresh tensions have erupted between the United KIngdom and the European Union over Brexit’s Northern Ireland Protocol. In this 2018 photo, students in Belfast reject any hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Photo: AFP

Britain’s Brexit Minister David Frost has demanded the European Union implement significant changes to the “rigid and needlessly harming” Northern Ireland Protocol, threatening to activate Article 16 which would dramatically escalate trade and political tensions and result in retaliatory action from Brussels.

In a speech in Lisbon on Tuesday, a day before the European Union was set to announce its own Northern Ireland plans, Lord Frost said the current Protocol was shredding the Good Friday Agreement and had become “the biggest source of mistrust between us”.

He added that it would cost the EU “very little’’ to make important changes to the Protocol introduced as part of the Brexit agreement, but insisted Britain’s red lines would include dismantling the Irish Sea border checks and ending the oversight of the European Court of Justice.

Britain’s Brexit Minister David Frost. Picture: AFP

Trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland post-Brexit has become mired in paperwork, huge delays and has cut off some sectors to trade across the Irish Sea, escalating north-south trade between Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and inflaming historic and political tensions between the two countries. The imbroglio has been termed the “sausage wars’’ because the EU banned British sausages and chilled meats from being sent into Northern Ireland.

But on Tuesday, Lord Frost fiercely reminded the EU that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom.

“Northern Ireland is not EU territory. It is our responsibility to safeguard peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland, and that may include using Article 16 if necessary. We would not go down this road gratuitously or with any particular pleasure,” Lord Frost said.

He said the Protocol needed to be revised because it had been drawn up in extreme haste in a time of great uncertainty. He said if the EU maintained that the Protocol could never be improved upon when it was so evidently causing such significant problems, it would be an “historic misjudgment”.

Lord Frost suggested the EU would do Northern Ireland a great disservice if it prioritised EU internal processes over relieving turbulence in Northern Ireland. He said societal disruption and trade distortion could not be disregarded as mere background noise, nor an acceptable price for Northern Ireland to pay to demonstrate that “Brexit has not worked”.

Here is the speech I delivered today in Lisbon on the future of UK-EU relations. https://t.co/AwVIdZZlGJ

— David Frost (@DavidGHFrost) October 12, 2021

European response to Lord Frost’s hard-hitting remarks were muted, with European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic to on Wednesday deliver Brussels’ plans for Northern Ireland. But there was behind the scenes uncertainty about whether Lord Frost’s tough stance was a negotiating tactic or if Boris Johnson’s government wanted to use the Northern Ireland difficulties as a way to further dismantle already fraught relations with the EU.