Tag: present

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will meet this Monday with the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to fulfill the final stretch of an agreement on the application of the Irish Protocol, which has blocked relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union after Brexit and has caused the collapse of home rule in Northern Ireland.

Von der Leyemn will arrive at the Prime Minister’s residence, at 10 Downing Street, “at lunchtime” and both will leave for Windsor Castle to sign it and appear at a press conference. The agreement is likely to be signed in the presence of King Carlos III. Later, Sunak will present a statement in the House of Commons, which will be followed by a debate.

The Ireland and Northern Ireland Protocol is part of the Withdrawal Agreement of the United Kingdom from the Union signed by the two parties on January 24, 2020. It contains the legislative procedures that prevent the creation of a border between the two Irelands, making it possible that Northern Ireland remains in the common market at the same time as it remains in the British internal market.

The document lists the regulations and directives that must apply to goods that are produced in Northern Ireland or arriving in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, so that non-compliant goods do not enter the Republic of Ireland. community rules. It also establishes the supremacy of the Court of Justice of the EU to resolve disputes.

The then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, celebrated the signing of the Protocol and assured, despite the contrary opinion of other politicians and experts, that it would not lead to the establishment of customs controls. The reality is that border requirements have become a source of complaints about the cost of the bureaucratic burden, leading to the temporary non-application of some controls.

For the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which was the majority in the province until the May 2022 elections, the Protocol weakens its position in the United Kingdom. And the obligation to apply without voice or vote the modifications of regulations and directives decided by the EU, and the role of the community court, are in his opinion a loss of sovereignty and a democratic deficit.

Seal

The DUP boycotts the autonomous institutions created in 1998 as an essential element of the peace agreement to protest the maintenance of the Protocol. The radical ‘brexiters’ deputies and Johnson himself demand that Sunak complete the processing of a bill from the former prime minister, which would give the British government the power to unilaterally annul the agreed obligations.

This context of British politics calls into question the viability of Sunak’s commitment, which seems determined to sign an agreement with Von der Leyen that does not modify the Protocol – Brussels’ persistent position – but would soften aspects of its application. The benefit would be the opening of negotiations on British participation in the Horizon scientific collaboration program, access to the financial market and other blocked issues.

The conservative leader, who took over as head of government in October – the third prime minister in four months – undertakes the biggest challenge of his tenure. Regarded as a meticulous and hard-working politician, he is portrayed by the Labor opposition as weak in the face of a scrambled parliamentary caucus and a party angry at him for his part in ousting Johnson.

He is now criticized for not having informed the unionists about the details of the negotiation until two weeks ago and for keeping secret the progress of his pacts with Brussels. He seems determined to “get Brexit done” and to challenge his critics. The polls say that Sunak, before sealing this inherited mess with his authority, is twenty points behind Labor in voting intentions.