UK sets up EU battle with N.Ireland changes

• UK government introduces legislation to repeal Northern Ireland trading rules.
• The protocol requires customs checks on goods arriving from England.
• the bill proposes overriding the EU withdrawal treaty signed by the UK.

The UK government introduced legislation on Monday to repeal post-Brexit trading rules for Northern Ireland, Despite the risk of sparking a trade war with the EU.

London maintains its preference for a negotiated solution with the European Union to reform the Northern Ireland Protocol.

However, with talks stalled, the bill proposes overriding the EU withdrawal treaty signed by the UK, despite the government’s insistence that it is not violating international law.

The EU quickly threatened legal action in response while Dublin called it “a particular low point in the UK’s approach to Brexit”

That could not come at a worse time for the UK, which is grappling with inflation at 40-year highs and rising household bills that have left many Britons struggling to make ends meet.

But London claims the bill will address “burdensome customs processes, inflexible regulation, tax and spend discrepancies and democratic governance issues” that are “undermining” peace in Northern Ireland and have paralysed its power-sharing government.

“The EU must be willing to change the protocol itself. Ministers believe that the serious situation in Northern Ireland means they cannot afford to delay,” it added.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss spoke to European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic and Ireland counterpart Simon Coveney on Monday to inform them the bill was being introduced in parliament.

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She called it a “reasonable, practical solution to the problems facing Northern Ireland”.

But Sefcovic said that the EU would not renegotiate its divorce deal and that Brussels would now consider reopening a suspended “infringement procedure” against Britain, as well as opening fresh cases.

“It is with significant concern that we take note of today’s decision by the UK Government to table legislation,” he said in a prepared statement to reporters in Brussels.

Sefcovic tweeted earlier that he had warned the UK minister that “unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust and a formula for uncertainty”.

Coveney told Truss the move marked “a particularly low point in the UK’s approach to Brexit” and was “deeply damaging to relationships on these islands and between the UK and EU”.

“The UK’s unilateral approach is not in the best interest of Northern Ireland and does not have the consent or support of the majority of people or business in Northern Ireland,” he added.

But Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted that the move was “the right way forward” and was needed to maintain the “balance and the symmetry” of the Good Friday peace agreement between pro-UK unionists and nationalists who want a united Ireland.

“One community at the moment feels very, very estranged from the way things are operating, very alienated. And we’ve just got to fix that,” he told LBC radio.

The pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party argues that the protocol’s creation of an effective border in the Irish Sea is jeopardizing Northern Ireland’s status in the wider UK and makes a united Ireland more likely.

It is boycotting the local government in Belfast until the deal is scrapped or dramatically overhauled.

Northern Ireland’s first minister-elect, Michelle O’Neill, of Irish nationalists Sinn Fein, said Johnson was “in clear breach of international law”.

But DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson welcomed the bill as “the kind of action that is required” to remove what he said were barriers to trade within the UK.

The protocol requires customs checks on goods arriving from England, Scotland, and Wales in order to prevent them from entering the EU’s single market via the Republic of Ireland and to avoid a return to a “hard border.”

Border infrastructure was a flashpoint during the 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland over British rule, and an open border was central to the peace agreement.

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