Northern Ireland -EU Trade talks

Brussels and London have taken a step back after a week of confrontation over the post-Brexit Northern Ireland trading arrangements, agreeing to refocus talks on areas where there is a prospect of reaching agreement.

Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s Brexit negotiator, said while the UK still needed to engage more fully in resolving issues raised by the so-called Northern Ireland protocol, the mood had improved.

Lord David Frost, the UK Brexit minister who is demanding a root-and-branch rewriting of the protocol, said talks had been conducted in a “constructive spirit” but it was now important “to bring new energy and impetus” to the discussions, including tackling the full list of UK demands.

The protocol, which formed part of the EU-UK Brexit withdrawal agreement, leaves Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods.

It requires a customs border in the Irish Sea in order to prevent the return of a north-south trade border on the island of Ireland.

Since July, the British government has said this arrangement was “not sustainable” because of trade frictions it created within the UK’s own internal market.

Sefcovic said discussion of Article 16 had come up “too often” between the two sides and urged the UK to focus on the EU’s practical proposals that he said would reduce Irish Sea border customs checks by up to 50 per cent.

In a statement released after the talks, Lord Frost said that while the UK preferred a “consensual way forward”, it still reserved its right to use the Article 16 safeguards, which were “a legitimate part of the protocol’s provisions”, but two senior Whitehall insiders with knowledge of internal discussions said the UK shift in tone was “significant” and that it was now possible that any decision to trigger Article 16 could be deferred until after Christmas.

The difference between the two sides centres on the UK’s demand that the EU’s top court, the European Court of Justice, should not preside over the deal, with its role being replaced by a ‘treaty based’ arbitration mechanism.

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