THE UK Government’s demands over the Northern Ireland Protocol are “very hard to accept”, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.
It comes as Brexit Minister Lord Frost said the UK was prepared to trigger Article 16 of the protocol - which allows either side to override large parts of the agreement - if a fundamental change to the policy was not agreed.
Frost made the comments during a keynote speech in Lisbon on Tuesday and said one of the changes the UK is seeking is replacing the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in policing the protocol with a system of international arbitration.
Varadkar said in a press conference that he couldn’t see the EU handing control of the rules of the single market to another court either in the UK or elsewhere.
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Asked for his reaction to the demands, Varadkar told Sky News that the Protocol was designed to do three things; prevent a hard land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, protect the integrity of the single market and Ireland’s role in it, and allow Northern Ireland to trade freely with the rest of Britain.
He said the first two needs were met, but that the final point on goods moving between the two countries is where “some issues have arisen”.
He said: “We’re working to resolve that as best we can and make modifications to free up the flow of goods from Britain into Northern Ireland.
“But ultimately the role of the European Court of Justice is there to adjudicate the rules of the single market, and you know I don’t think we can ever have a situation where another court was deciding what the rules of the European single market are.
“The recent demands of the U.K. government are very hard to accept” - here’s our exchange with @LeoVaradkar #Brexit #protocol 🇪🇺🇮🇪🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/faTbpPjUUD
— Stephen Murphy (@SMurphyTV) October 12, 2021
“And I think that’s why it makes the demands, the most recent demands of the UK Government very hard to accept, because the role of the ECJ is to adjudicate on European laws and European standards. I don’t see how that could be handed to British courts or to other courts.”
Varadkar added that although some have pointed to difficulties in trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, Britain was having its own issues getting goods into the country.
He added: “Look at the trouble that Britain has had getting goods into Britain, you know, real shortages in England, now in Scotland and Wales, ranging from petrol stations being closed to shelves not having goods on them because of Brexit, and actually the Protocol has protected Northern Ireland from that, it has fewer supply issues than the rest of the United Kingdom.”
READ MORE: What is the Northern Ireland Protocol and Article 16?
It comes as Lord Frost said reform was essential, because the way the protocol was operating had “shredded” the balance between the two communities – unionist and nationalist – in Northern Ireland.
Unionists in Northern Ireland have been pressing for change, fearing their place within the United Kingdom is being undermined.
He said: “We now face a very serious situation. The protocol is not working. It has completely lost consent in one community in Northern Ireland.
“It is not doing the thing it was set up to do – protect the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. In fact, it is doing the opposite. It has to change.
Tánaiste Varadkar is the deputy head of the government of Ireland
“The fundamental difficulty is that we are being asked to run a full-scale external boundary of the EU through the centre of our country, to apply EU law without consent in part of it, and to have any dispute on these arrangements settled in the court of one of the parties.
“The way this is happening is disrupting ordinary lives, damaging large and small businesses, and causing serious turbulence to the institutions of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement within Northern Ireland.”
He said it would be a “historic misjudgment” by the EU to argue that the arrangements in the protocol – which were drawn up in “great haste” – could never be improved upon.
Lord Frost’s speech came the day before the EU was due to produce its plans to resolve issues surrounding the protocol.
He said the UK would consider whatever European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic put forward “seriously, fully, and positively”.
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