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NI negotiations in progress.

 Sir Tim Bar­row, the prime min­is­ter’s national secur­ity adviser and former ambas­sador to the EU, has been deployed to help with the dip­lomacy around the highly sens­it­ive dis­cus­sions.


Brexit

Simon Case, cab­inet sec­ret­ary, is said by col­leagues to be play­ing an increas­ingly import­ant role, draw­ing on his exper­i­ence of EU nego­ti­ations. The case led to early dis­cus­sions on the Irish bor­der prob­lem thrown up by Brexit.

Three people famil­iar with the talks said there had been a «sig­ni­fic­ant» step for­ward and that the out­line of a frame­work agree­ment was crys­tal­lising.

But two EU insiders cau­tioned that con­vert­ing the out­line of a deal into a viable polit­ical agree­ment «depended a lot» on whether Sunak could sell the deal in Lon­don.

Talks between Lon­don and Brus­sels have intens­i­fied in recent weeks to thrash out a deal to min­im­ise the impact of the North­ern Ire­land pro­tocol, which cre­ated a trade bor­der in the Irish Sea.

Sir Jef­frey Don­ald­son, the DUP leader, has repeatedly said any deal must «restore our place in the UK».

A deal will turn on whether the agree­ment can reduce checks at the Irish Sea trade bor­der to man­age­able levels and resolve the role of the European Court of Justice in enfor­cing the pro­tocol.

A sys­tem of «red» and «green» lanes is expec­ted to form the basis of a plan to reduce checks on goods going from Great Bri­tain to North­ern Ire­land, with products destined to remain in the region being clearly labelled.

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  1. Jerry28 January 2023 at 12:34

    They need to solve this right away so things can return to normal. A lot of businesses and people are suffering because of this specific issue. It needs solving very fast.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Karl28 January 2023 at 13:32

      I wonder why they don't just go to the way things were before Brexit, with a few changes that naturally need to be made. Why does it have to be so complicated? I'm sure I'm missing a lot of parts here, but I just want this solved already.

      Delete

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