The European Union cannot just do away with the Northern Ireland protocol as it fulfils a vital role in minimising disruption on the island of Ireland caused Brexit, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney has said.
Mr Coveney said an “ongoing standoff” on the Northern Irish protocol was in “nobody’s interest” but “we need to be honest with people as well in terms of what’s possible”.
The protocol is a post-Brexit arrangement to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland
Mr Coveney said the European Commission was “ working to find common ground “ and the Government was working the European Commission to look at applying “ the maximum flexibility possible in terms of implementing the protocol”.
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“But that is not a renegotiation or a change of the protocol . It’s about applying significant flexibilities as to how it’s implemented and having an open mind about new ways of doing things and that’s the space we’re in to try and respond to genuine concerns in Northern Ireland.”
Speaking in Cobh in Co Cork where he officially opened a hostel run by the Organisation of National Ex-Servicemen for homeless veterans of the Defence Forces, Mr Coveney acknowledged that the British government has strong views on how the protocol should be implemented.
“We simply can’t just do away with the protocol overnight and pretend there isn’t a need for it - the protocol was a solution that was designed and implemented and ratified by the British government as well as the EU to try and manage the disruption of Brexit for the island of Ireland as a whole.
“We need to ensure that it’s implemented in a way that minimizes the disruption to trade flows and responds to the legitimate concerns that have been outlined by business interests and in particular the unionist community in Northern Ireland and we will do as much as we can on that.”
Earlier Brandon Lewis has said the UK has shown "good faith" in ongoing negotiations over the Northern Ireland protocol by not triggering article 16.
The Northern Secretary said on Sunday the UK wanted to achieve “proper, sustainable” solutions to the row over the protocol.
“What we’re saying is that article 16 conditions have been met. We could trigger it. But we’re showing our good faith in wanting to negotiate proper, sustainable solutions by not actually triggering it,” he said.
The EU has not done enough on its side to resolve issues around the protocol, Mr Lewis told the BBC on Sunday.
Triggering article 16 allows either side to unilaterally seek to dispense with some of the terms if they are proving unexpectedly harmful. On Friday British prime minister Boris Johnson said it was possible the British government would trigger article 16 if the EU did not make appropriate concessions on trading restrictions on Northern Ireland.
He said the protocol could work in principle but warned it will come down to “fixing it or ditching it”.
Speaking on Saturday, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said he does not expect the UK to trigger article 16.
“My understanding is that the British government is not likely to trigger article 16,” Mr Coveney told RTÉ . “It would be a hugely problematic backward step in relationships between the UK government and the EU institutions at a time actually when we are trying to build trust.”
Regulatory checks
Mr Lewis also said there would always be the need for some kind of regulatory checks between Northern Ireland and Britain.
“There will always be an agreement, a treaty, a structure between us and the EU for goods that are moving into the EU,” Mr Lewis said.
“It’s often forgot there has been some form of phytosanitary checks, the SPS checks people talk about, between Great Britain and Northern Ireland because of the single epidemiological unit of the island for a very, very long time.”
“So some form of structure around that isn’t going to change. What we need to do is resolve these issues that are currently there with the protocol.”
Mr Lewis said he was hopeful DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson would not follow up on a threat to collapse Stormont.
“I’m hopeful that the DUP don’t do that. I am hopeful we can get a resolution from the EU,” Mr Lewis said. “I don’t think the public wants to see Stormont come down.”
Mr Lewis refused to say whether, if Stormont did collapse, he would call an early Assembly election ahead of the scheduled date in May. – PA
