After the \u2018series of unfortunate events\u2019 that had characterised the EU-UK relationship since the start of the year, the summer and autumn of 2021 have seen a pattern of moves to attempt to put the Protocol (or a version of it) on a more sustainable footing. It is difficult to escape the sense that the Protocol is keeping the UK and EU in some form of continued bargaining (at times more bad-tempered than others), even though both sides would prefer to have rather less to do with each other at this stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The end of June saw the EU \u2018put forward a balanced package of measures to address some of the most pressing issues\u2019<\/a> related to the implementation of the Ireland\/N. Ireland Protocol. This included agreement to the UK’s request to extend the grace period for the GB-NI movement of chilled meats until September 30th<\/sup>, proposed simplification for the movement of medicines and guide dogs GB-NI, and removing the use of insurance green cards for UK drivers in Ireland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On July 21st<\/sup>, foreshadowing the further turbulence in its relationship with the EU and swiftly drawing the approval of political unionism<\/a> in Northern Ireland, the UK government issued a command paper titled \u2018Northern Ireland Protocol: the way forward\u2019.<\/a> Asserting that border checks on goods moving from GB to NI had proved unsustainable<\/a>, the paper effectively demanded a significant redrawing of the Protocol<\/a>. While declaring that the conditions for invoking Article 16 safeguard measures had been met, it stated that it would for now keep that move in reserve. Instead, it pressed for the removal of goods destined for NI from the Protocol\u2019s scope of customs checks and certification. It further requested that labelled goods conforming to UK rules should be allowed to circulate freely in NI alongside EU-registered products, and that a \u2018standstill\u2019 period (including the continuation of existing grace periods), be agreed. The EU\u2019s approach of seeking \u2018creative solutions within the framework of the protocol\u2019<\/a>, reiterated in its same-day response to the \u2018Command Paper\u2019<\/a>, was counter-posed against the UK\u2019s stated demand for an overall renegotiation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Command Paper was being published, the prime minister\u2019s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, told the BBC that the Protocol had been a \u2018fudge\u2019<\/a>, and the result of both sides\u2019 wilful and conscious decision to \u2018punt difficult questions into the future to figure out later\u2019. Corroborated by similar suggestions by Conservative backbenchers<\/a>, the claims caused alarm in Dublin, provoking questions over the UK government\u2019s trustworthiness<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Discrepancy between the EU and UK\u2019s imagined paths forward from the Protocol-related impasse was confirmed by Lord Frost\u2019s British-Irish Association speech in early September<\/a>. In it he asserted that the present difficulties flow from \u2018the way [the Protocol] is constructed\u2019, not from a \u2018failure\u2019 to implement it\u2019. He concluded that \u2018solutions which involve \u201cflexibilities\u201d within the current rules\u2019 will not \u2018work\u2019 for the British Government. Instead, the solution preferred by Government was for a new agreement to replace the Protocol, as provided for in Article 13(8). Lord Frost outlined three areas that needed change: the movement of goods into Northern Ireland, the standards for goods within Northern Ireland, and the governance arrangements for regulating this<\/a>. While envisaging that EU laws can still be valid, \u2018within certain circumstances\u2019 in Northern Ireland, these proposals rejected the principle of \u2018automatic extraterritorial application of EU law\u2019, with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) acting as an arbiter of last resort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later that week the UK government proceeded to again unilaterally extend the grace period<\/a> on the ban on GB-made chilled meat products which was due to expire at the end of September. The move was welcomed by the DUP NI economy minister Gordon Lyons who had earlier called for such an extension<\/a>. Not long after, Stormont Agricultural Minister Edwin Poots told his officials to allow indefinitely all pet dogs, cats and ferrets travelling from GB into NI without checks<\/a> \u2013 although the Protocol requires such movement to be accompanied with specified paperwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During his visit to Northern Ireland that same week, the European Commission Vice President Maro\u0161 \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d told an audience at Queen’s University that both the EU and UK needed to make further compromises<\/a> on the Protocol. Asserting that \u2018removing the Protocol will not solve any issues\u2019, Mr \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d suggested any future EU-UK talks<\/a> would focus on limiting the disruption in the supply of goods to NI and on enhancing the participation of NI political institutions and stakeholders in the Protocol\u2019s implementation. He was adamant the EU was not prepared to discuss the removal of ECJ\u2019s jurisdiction with respect to Protocol-related disputes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During Mr \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d\u2019s visit, the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson set out his party\u2019s position in a public speech delivered in Belfast<\/a>. He stated that the Protocol \u2018threaten[ed] to provoke the most serious constitutional crisis in Northern Ireland since [its] formation a century ago\u2019 and reiterated Frost\u2019s demand to eliminate the jurisdiction of the ECJ with regards to Northern Ireland. He announced that, until disputes over the Protocol were addressed to their satisfaction, the DUP would immediately withdraw from the north\/south structures of Strand II of the Belfast Agreement<\/a>, save where these concern \u2018important health related matters\u2019. The DUP leader also warned his party’s ministers would resign from the Stormont Executive<\/a> if changes to the Protocol were not made by November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This came against a background of continued anti-protocol rallies organised by unionist and loyalist organisations<\/a>. One prominent organiser, Jamie Bryson published a pamphlet arguing that unionism should abandon the Belfast Agreement<\/a> and called on unionist politicians to \u2018embrace loyalism\u2019 in the name of the \u2018common cause against the Protocol\u2019 by refusing to implement it.<\/a> In September, Mr Bryson further warned that the Protocol poses a \u2018serious threat to peace and security\u2019 in Northern Ireland, arguing that it amounts to the \u2018colonisation\u2019 of the region<\/a>. Rhetoric was increasingly strong among unionist politicians too. The self-described \u2018pragmatic, common sense approach\u2019<\/a> of the UUP, which had been ridiculed by former FM Peter Robinson<\/a>, was escalated during the Autumn. By late September, Doug Beattie joined leaders of the other unionist parties in a common declaration<\/a> of opposition to the Protocol, stating that it \u2018undermines the Belfast\/Good Friday Agreement\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unionist unease increased with the reports in early October<\/a> that the value of goods imported from Northern Ireland to the Republic had risen by 77 per cent in the first six months of the year, while exports from the Republic into the North rose 43 per cent. Blasted as \u2018diversion of trade\u2019 by the DUP leader<\/a>, the issue became the focus of a fringe discussion at the Conservative Party conference that month. The policy and advocacy chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses Martin McTague suggested that in this way the Protocol will \u2018put pressure on the union inevitably\u2019<\/a>. Lord Frost reiterated at the same event his view that change to the Protocol was urgently needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The day before the EU was due to issue its official response to the UK government demands, Lord Frost went to Lisbon to deliver a speech on the UK-EU relationship<\/a>. Repeating the demand to remove the role of the ECJ from the Protocol, the content and timing of the speech underlined the strain in the EU-UK relationship. The following day, the European Commission published four \u2018non-legislative papers\u2019 outlining proposed bespoke arrangements for addressing the difficulties with the Protocol<\/a>. The non-papers proposed \u2018further flexibilities\u2019 and \u2018a different model for the implementation of the Protocol\u2019. Stressing that this movement was a response to what \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d had heard directly from NI stakeholders on his visit in September, the EU was more proactive in communication around its proposals than in the past. \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d wrote an op ed in the Belfast Telegraph<\/a>, for example, in which he raised the prospect of an 80% reduction on the checks on goods to be consumed in NI. He claimed the EU\u2019s proposal \u2018provide[d] a credible way forward to improve the everyday lives of people in Northern Ireland and ensure businesses can run more smoothly, while they continue to benefit from the tangible opportunities the Protocol brings\u2019. A new period of intense UK-EU discussions on the Protocol thus began<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even as their officials talk, the UK Government and EU Commission continue to clash in public. As October rolled into November, \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d wrote in the Daily Telegraph<\/a> of his concern that the UK Government actively sought confrontation rather than compromise. Meanwhile, Frost wrote a foreword for a Policy Exchange<\/a> paper in which he described the EU\u2019s approach to the Protocol as destroying \u2018cross-community consent well before the four-year mark\u2019. In the early hours of November 1st, loyalists set a bus on fire in Newtownards in apparent \u2018reference to the NI Protocol\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The urgency of moving from UK-EU arguments over the Protocol towards agreement is ever apparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n About the Authors: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr Milena Komarova<\/a> is Research Fellow on the ESRC-funded \u2018Future and Status of Northern Ireland after Brexit\u2019 project for the UK in a Changing Europe, based at Queen\u2019s University Belfast. Milena\u2019s research spans the fields of conflict, borders and urban studies.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Prof Katy Hayward<\/a> is Professor of Political Sociology at Queen\u2019s University Belfast and a Senior Fellow of the ESRC-funded UK in a Changing Europe<\/a> initiative, working full-time on the topic of Brexit and Northern Ireland\/the Irish border.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The featured image<\/a><\/em> has been used courtesy of a <\/em>Creative Commons license. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An overview of UK-EU moves on the Protocol from July to October 2021 by Dr Milena Komarova and Prof Katy Hayward. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2610,"featured_media":6682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"mb":[],"acf":{"authors":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":9774,"key":"field_66d0cbf58f930","label":"Authors","name":"authors","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"relationship","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"post_type":["authors"],"post_status":["publish"],"taxonomy":"","filters":["search"],"return_format":"id","min":0,"max":10,"allow_in_bindings":0,"elements":["featured_image"],"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"authors","_valid":1}},"description":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":"","value":"","field":{"ID":9776,"key":"field_66d2183027749","label":"Description","name":"description","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"wysiwyg","value":null,"menu_order":3,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","allow_in_bindings":0,"tabs":"all","toolbar":"basic","media_upload":0,"delay":1,"_name":"description","_valid":1}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/76\/2020\/04\/5398076688_332f29961e_c.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"mfb_rest_fields":["title","jetpack_featured_media_url","jetpack_sharing_enabled","amp_enabled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}