The British government presented a bill in Parliament on Monday which calls into question the post-Brexit customs status of the British nation. The European Commission threatens to legal action.
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Boris Johnson takes the risk of provoking a new and deep crisis between the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU), despite the war in Ukraine. Less than three years after signing the Brexit agreement with Brussels, the British Prime Minister unilaterally calls into a crucial part of this international treaty. With the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, a bill announced in May, published and officially tabled in the House of Commons Monday, June 13, Downing Street intends to get rid of entire sections of the North Irish protocol, a text sparkling the unique and dual position of Northern Ireland, which remains part of the European internal market although it is one of the United Kingdom nations – the aim being to avoid a “hard” border on the island of Ireland.
The bill drastically lightens the customs controls introduced by the Protocol to the Irish Sea, by removing all the controls for products from Great Britain intended for the North Irish market (only the products likely to be sold in the Republic of Ireland would still be checked). The text also eliminates the role of supervision of the protocol by the Court of Justice of the European Union and gives British ministers the right to modify almost all the rest of the protocol (the regime of state aid, VAT, etc. ).
The goal displayed by Liz Truss, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, is to “protect” the Friday’s peace agreement in 1998 (having ended the civil war between Unionists, faithful to London, and nationalists, Supporters of a reunification of Ireland), who, according to it, would be destabilized by the protocol, the Unionists considering that it constitutes a serious attack on their British identity. Boris Johnson’s less admitted goal is to convince the DUP, the principal Unionist party, to agree to form an executive with the nationalists in Belfast. DUP leaders believe that the head of government betrayed them by promising them, at the end of 2019, that the protocol would introduce “no” control in the Ireland Sea, and now blackmail with Downing Street to ‘get rid of it.
avalanche of negative reactions
For Europeans, the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill constitutes a patent violation of international commitments in the United Kingdom. Simon Coveney, the Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs, regretted a text which, if adopted, “would violate British commitments with regard to international law”. Vice-president of the European Commission, Maros Sefcovic, denounced a “unilateral action affecting mutual trust”. And he announced that the Commission was planning to relaunch the offense procedure it had initiated in March 2021 when London had – already – unilaterally decided to extend the period of grace during which customs controls did not apply to sea ‘Ireland, the time that economic environments adapt.
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