The first meeting of this new phase will be held this Monday in the town of Berkshire, in the south of the United Kingdom.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyenand the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunakhave agreed this Sunday to continue “in person” the negotiations to achieve “practical and shared solutions” about him Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland. The first meeting of this new phase will be held this Monday in the town of Berkshire, in the south of the United Kingdom.
“Today, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyenand UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have agreed to continue their work in person towards practical and shared solutions to the range of complex challenges around the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland”, indicates the joint statement published by the European Commission in Brussels.
“The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and I we agreed to continue working in person towards practical solutions shared under the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland. So tomorrow I will meet the Prime Minister in the UKVon der Leyen tweeted, linking to the joint statement and featuring a photo of the EU and UK flags.
prime minister @RishiSunak and I agreed to continue working in person towards shared, practical solutions under the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.
I will therefore meet with the Prime Minister tomorrow in the UK.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) February 26, 2023
German politics and British leader they had held a meeting in person on the 18th on the margins of the Security Conference in Munich (Germany), in which agreed to continue negotiating to resolve the pending points of the protocol.
Von der Leyen and Sunak then agreed that good progress had been made in the search for solutions, although they considered that “intensive” work was needed at the “official and ministerial” level.
This intensive work has been led since then by the European side by the Vice President of the European Commission, Maros Sefcovic, who in recent days He has held face-to-face meetings and by videoconference with the British Foreign Minister, James Cleverly, and for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris.
Statement by the Deputy Prime Minister
This same Sunday, the British deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, said that an EU agreement on Northern Ireland was “about” to be closed and that it will be “a matter of days, not weeks”.
In an interview on the “Sky News” channel, Raab announced that, according to the terms of what was negotiated with Brussels, the role of the European Court of Justice “will be significantly limited” to resolve possible disputes between the EU and the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland.
The “number two” of the Executive also advanced that the cabinet of the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will give up promoting the law that would allow breaking parts of the protocol unilaterally.
Raab’s statements came after Sunak assured in an interview published today in the Sunday Times that his government “is giving everything” to “finish unfinished business on Brexit“. The signs that the agreement seems close also came the day before from Dublin.
“You have to make one last effort to achieve it”
The Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, assured on Saturday that the negotiations between Brussels and London to reform the Northern Irish Protocol “are coming to a conclusion“.
“Now we have to make one last effort to achieve it, because the benefits are huge: it would allow us to get the (autonomous) Assembly back on track in the North, make the Good Friday Agreement work and lay a much more positive foundation for the relationship between the UK, Ireland and the EU,” said the Irish leader. to the press.
The British province of Northern Ireland remains without a government due to the rejection of the second force, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to join a unity executive with the most voted formation, the nationalist Sinn Féin, until the protocol is reformed .
In the United Kingdom, the deputies of the ruling Conservative Party have been ordered to be present at Monday’s session of the House of Commons (Lower), presumably to endorse the pact that London and Brussels finalize to settle their post-Brexit relationship.
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The protocol, devised to avoid a physical border between the two Irelands, keeps Northern Ireland within the Community internal market and British, so that controls on trade between the United Kingdom and the EU are carried out at the Northern Irish entry points, which entails a new bureaucracy that affects trade.
Is trade border located in the Irish Sea is also a political barrier for the unionist community, which maintains that it endangers the relationship of the province with the rest of the United Kingdom.