The European border within their own country hinders Northern Irish people

It’s getting close to lunchtime and there’s a long queue at Sawers delicatessen in the heart of Belfast. The hot sandwiches are flying over the counter. The Belfast Buster, with ham, cheddar and chipotle sauce, is popular. Just like the Belfast Alligator, a thick focaccia with Irish beef and red onion, and the Italian Melt, with Parma ham and mozzarella.

Meanwhile, owner Kieran Sloan shows his range of cheese further down the store. Two shop windows full of stilton from England, red Leicester from Wales, Irish blue cheese and morbier from France. What he has to offer his customers has changed since Brexit, Sloan says. “We are now ordering more cheeses through Dublin because the delivery time for English cheeses is longer. We have to compensate for that a little bit.” The Dublin route, which means that his orders from the EU come to Belfast via Ireland.

Because cheese from England now takes about ten days to cross the Irish Sea. Previously, before Brexit, it was “order Monday, delivered Tuesday,” says Sloan. He can no longer get other products at all. “Some nice hams, black pudding, that sort of thing.” Suppliers ‘from the other side’ are no longer serving Northern Irish customers, he says. “They think it is too much work and have said to us: we are waiting until a solution has been found.”

The United Kingdom may have left the European Union and therefore no longer form part of the internal free market for goods, but a different reality applies to Northern Ireland. Due to historical sensitivities, the UK and EU agreed on a border at sea with Brexit, with controls in the ports of Northern Ireland. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson came back from that last July – according to critics he always intended to, even when he agreed to the deal. Since then, Brussels and London have been talking about a new protocol.

Tough negotiations

In short, British negotiator and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss wants to reduce controls and paperwork for trade between Northern Ireland and ‘the other side’, i.e. the rest of the UK, as far as possible, preferably to zero. Conversely, Brussels wants assurances that there will be no ‘leaks’ at the EU’s external borders, for example when it comes to animal diseases, food safety or illegal goods.

Those negotiations are going smoothly. In the UK, the EU still likes to be portrayed as a major culprit, according to criticism from Brussels. But Northern Ireland’s domestic politics also pose an obstacle. There will be elections for the local parliament in May and the campaign is in full swing. A lawsuit is due in Belfast on Monday because last month unionist agriculture minister Edwin Poots wanted to end all controls on food and animals in the ports. His party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), would prefer to have the entire protocol and the border at sea removed, because they believe that this would result in too much separation with the UK.

The judge subsequently ruled that a hearing must be held, because existing legislation cannot simply be set aside. Last year the protocol with the same court has already stood. But this time, it was the British government’s response to Poots’ move that irritated European Union officials. This was an internal Northern Ireland affair, a British spokesman had dismissed the matter. If that were the case, they thought at the EU, why does Brussels even bother to make agreements with London?

Six hours of work

Kieran Sloan hopes that a new agreement means simplification for him. He points to a rack of bottles of spicy sauces. A bottle ultimate insanity hot sauce costs 14.99 pounds, about 18 euros. “We’re paying an extra £200 to have it delivered from London. We have to pass this on to our customers. Plus six hours of work to fill in all the forms.”

He’s heard that the compromise might come down to one code per delivery, rather than the dozens of different codes he now has to work with. “Something like that would be great.”

Sloan estimates that he used to source about 60 percent of his products from the UK and import 40 percent from neighboring Ireland. Now it’s the other way around: about 70 percent come from Ireland and maybe 30 percent from England, Scotland and Wales.

It fits in with the larger trend of massively increased trade between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Ireland’s exports to the north increased 54 percent last year, conversely, Northern Ireland’s exports to the republic increased 65 percent. This is very likely the Brexit effect, but it is not entirely certain. Trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK is not well tracked.

What is clear is that larger companies see opportunities in the special position of Northern Ireland, which has almost free access to both the internal EU market and the UK. “Exporters are having the time of their lives,” said Stephen Kelly of lobbying group Manufacturing NI late last year against business newspaper de Financial Times† Reports of major new investments from all kinds of companies trickle in: oatmeal producer White’s Oats closed a new deal with Aldi for both Ireland and Northern Ireland. Pharmaceutical Almac is expanding and hiring a thousand new people. And a new one is coming can factory which has, among other things, Coca-Cola as a customer.

Green or orange

Farmer David Laughlin shakes his head when you ask him about protocol. He walks out of the stable, in overalls and boots, but immediately starts talking about the divisions that he believes the negotiations over the position of Northern Ireland are sowing. “It has become a political hot potato. And because in Northern Ireland we simply follow our tribes – we always vote green or orange – we don’t look at the matter itself in terms of substance.” Green is Catholic and Irish, Orange is Protestant and UK oriented.

Also read: Brussels and London continue to argue over Northern Ireland

The mild-mannered David Laughlin himself is Protestant. His farm is located in the green hills of Coleraine, an area where about two thirds of the inhabitants are Protestant. And so he has traditionally voted for the Democratic Unionist Party. But to be fair, he says, it is for lack of better. “As far as protocol is concerned, they are only so vehemently against because the other side is in favour. I am disappointed in that. We entrepreneurs don’t look at origin, we just want to do business.”

Laughlin studied in Belfast when tensions between Protestants and Catholics were at their peak, in the 1970s and 1980s. He and his friends hoped that peace in the late 1990s would also end what he… tribal politics calls. “Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I’ve been wondering for years why politics is still so divided, while the inhabitants are much less so. We recognize that you did not choose to be born Protestant or Catholic.”

In practical terms, Brexit has also affected Laughlin, especially in terms of costs and paperwork. His farm is organic, he keeps about a hundred cows, for the milk and for the meat. He cannot get the special organic food in Ireland, so it has to come from England. “We are now paying an administration fee of £25 per load. And it seems that suppliers have wanted to take advantage. Two years ago we paid £400 for a tonne of feed, now it is £575 and no one can explain to me why.”

Laughlin is used to the paperwork by now, although he still feels “mild irritation” at having to do it.

Board is silent

Due to the elections in May, the negotiations between Brussels and London will make little progress for the time being, is the general expectation. Any form of British compromise could be angered by the DUP.

Recently, Paul Givan, prime minister on behalf of that party, resigned in protest against the protocol. After that, Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s nationalist deputy prime minister, also had to leave, because in Northern Ireland the two parties share power by default. That is one of the agreements to keep the peace. As a result, the government of Northern Ireland has virtually come to a standstill and there are, for example, no budget decisions to be made.

The Catholic Sinn Féin party, once the political arm of the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, appears in May to get the most votes for the first time† The DUP now threatens to come to the table for a new government or not at all.

What if Sinn Féin does indeed become the largest for the first time in Northern Ireland’s history? It makes little difference to Protestant David Laughlin. “Okay, then they’re in charge. But the unionist party will make it so difficult for them that progress is not really possible. It is so sad that our deeply divided politics is holding back our economic development.”

A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 5 March 2022

A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 5, 2022