Northern Ireland to get new Brexit trade rules in deal to restore power sharing
Source: The Guardian
New rules to smooth post-Brexit trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland have been unveiled by the government as part of a deal with the Democratic Unionist party that will restore the Stormont executive and install a Sinn Féin first minister.
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The measures remove routine checks on goods from Great Britain that are destined to remain in Northern Ireland and replaces them with a “UK internal market system” for goods that remain within the UK.
The government has promised to amend domestic law so that new EU laws will not automatically apply in Northern Ireland and must first be subject to democratic oversight by the Stormont assembly. The command paper also includes legislative measures – to be fast-tracked through Westminster on Thursday – to affirm Northern Ireland’s constitutional position in the UK.
Downing Street said the deal entailed significant changes to the “operation” of the post-Brexit Windsor framework without altering its “fundamentals”.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/31/northern-ireland-to-get-new-brexit-trade-rules-in-deal-to-restore-power-sharing
The reaction from Dublin is that they think it will be OK with the EU, which was the question until the details were given.
Micheál Martin, the Irish foreign minister and tánaiste (deputy PM), has said that he does not expect the European Commission to object to the proposals in the Safeguarding the Union document setting out terms of the No 10/DUP deal to revise the Windsor framework.
Speaking after meeting the political parties in Belfast, he said:
I think the EU commission will look at this, I think that’s the whole purpose of the joint committee and, indeed, the various mechanisms that are in the Windsor framework is to go through issues as they arise, but I do not anticipate any particular difficulties in respect of the EU side.
Asked what would protecting the EU single market if goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland were not checked, he said:
For goods that are going from the UK into Northern Ireland that are staying in Northern Ireland, we’ve always been of the view that the more streamlined and seamless one can make that, the better all round because we want any of the frameworks we put in place to work for industry, business and jobs in Northern Ireland.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jan/31/northern-ireland-dup-sinn-fein-stormont-pmqs-rishi-sunak-keir-starmer-latest-politics-updates?page=with:block-65ba6f338f0820d0f275ac69#block-65ba6f338f0820d0f275ac69
This will be the first time a nationalist party has held the position of First Minister.
As the BBC just said, they seem to have tried to blur the lines of the various needs (keep the Good Friday agreement intact, keep EU import rules intact, keep the right wing of the Tories and DUP happy that "the UK is sovereign with no internal border"
just about enough to say "this fits".
= new reply since forum marked as read
