For the United Kingdom, the suspension of the North Irish protocol, which establishes a post-Brexit customs border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, “is on the table”.
“We hope to make some progress, but honestly, the gap between us is still important.” David Frost, British Minister for Brexit, had announced the color just before his meeting in Brussels, Friday, November 5, with Maros Sefcovic, the Vice-President of the European Commission. This one has indeed ended in the stalemate. Whether it is on the application of the North Irish protocol, crucial component of the Brexit Agreement, or on the issue of fisheries, which opposes in particular London and Paris, the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) have always appeared also divided.
“We did not see any movement on the British side. I find it disappointing and, once again, I ask the British government to cooperate with us with all sincerity,” said Maros Sefcovic at the end of the meeting, which lasted almost three hours. Progress has been “limited” and European proposals “do not effectively resolve” the current difficulties, replicate the British.
If the problem of licenses not obtained by the French fishermen has retained the media attention of these last days, the meeting between Mr Sefcovic and Mr. Frost focused on Northern Ireland. London claims a renegotiation of the protocol, which establishes a customs border at sea from Ireland, between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is a commercial border within the United Kingdom, considered to be an infringement of its sovereignty by the British government.
In the field, the protocol has considerably complicated with trade between these two parts of the country, causing empty radiation at the beginning of the year in supermarkets. “Today, exporters have adapted and it’s pretty well on the ground, but it’s because we got a period of time,” says Aodhan Connolly, the Director of the Consortium of Northern Ireland Traders . The United Kingdom has indeed unilaterate the imposition of several additional controls, in particular health, which should have been implemented current 2021.
Proposals to limit customs procedures
Conscious of the extreme sensitivity of the subject in a province that has had a thirty-year-old civil war, the European Commission eventually made a gesture. If she refused any renegotiation of the protocol, she put on the table, mid-October, proposals to limit customs procedures. “Formalities will be halfway, a large number of retail products will benefit from simplified certification and controls will be simplified up to 80%,” Friday recalled Mr. Sefcovic, insisting that the fact that the Union had done so “a big step” to London. The British government rejects this reading. It highlights the calculations of a supermarket chain, which believes that the Commission’s proposals would reduce delays at the frontier of forty-eight to forty-three hours only …
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