Stephen Farry MP: Conclusion of a comprehensive and legal Northern Ireland Protocol deal is urgent
Unlock Democracy is campaigning to ensure that the UK government observes international law in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol. We invited Stephen Farry MP to write a guest blog for us on the situation in Northern Ireland.
Conclusion of a comprehensive and legal Northern Ireland Protocol deal is urgent
The next few weeks are set to be crucial for the UK and EU reaching a negotiated outcome regarding the reform of the Northern Ireland Protocol, and with it the operation of the Northern Ireland Assembly and wider political stability and cohesion.
Our region can only work on the basis of sharing and interdependence as facilitated by the Good Friday Agreement. This was reinforced by the joint UK and Irish membership of the European Union, and specifically the Single Market and Customs Union, which allowed open borders across these islands.
Brexit poses a massive existential threat to Northern Ireland. A hard Brexit necessitates a line on the map somewhere to manage the interface between the UK and EU single market. Any such line brings some degree of friction and a threat to some people’s sense of identity.
The particular challenges posed to Northern Ireland necessitate some form of special arrangements, whether that be the original proposed backstop, the current Protocol or something else in due course.
The current Protocol provides some relative opportunities for Northern Ireland arising from its dual market access to both GB and the EU, but this is still much inferior to full EU membership. However, it does bring its challenges for movement across the Irish Sea.
Those opportunities need to be maximised, while the challenges need to be minimised.
In a monumental strategic mistake, the DUP backed Brexit and continued to argue for a hard Brexit and in doing so destabilised Northern Ireland. Having rejected a pragmatic response, they have now framed the Protocol as a constitutional threat and withdrawn from the power-sharing Executive to try to force either significant change or the scrapping of the Protocol in its entirety.
This has been indulged by the Conservative Government of its past three iterations in legislating for the Protocol Bill which threatens unilateral rewriting of the Protocol.
Both the DUP and Conservatives are in denial of the realities of the consequences of their decisions around Brexit and need to have a much better appreciation of what can work and what won’t work for Northern Ireland.
There are challenges for both. For the Conservatives, they need to move beyond the hostility to the European Court of Justice and outmoded notions of sovereignty.
For the DUP, they need to move away from wrongly framing the Protocol as a constitutional issue and instead see it as a practical challenge to be managed. Their continued blocking of the NI Assembly and Executive from functioning, risks giving the impression that Northern Ireland can’t work and accelerating demands for a united Ireland.
The only way forward lies within negotiations between the UK and EU. For us, the only real requirement is that Northern Ireland retains dual access to the GB and EU markets. This does entail our region continuing to abide by some aspects of EU law, and the ultimate jurisdiction of the ECJ. Beyond that any deal must be mutually agreed, legal, and sustainable. Unilateral action under the Protocol Bill would be destructive.
Over recent months there have been improvements in the mood music between the UK and EU, but until now we have seen little substantive progress.
The agreement this week on data-sharing is welcome, and it provides a platform for further progress.
Ultimately, it is necessary for the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to make some decisions on where he wants to take this, especially with compelling reasons for the UK to mend relations with the EU.
Time is now pressing, and the conclusion of a comprehensive deal is urgent.
Stephen Farry MP is the Deputy Leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author.