Northern Ireland Minister of Agriculture Edwin Poots has decided to eliminate all customs controls required by Brexit on food and agricultural products in a unilateral decision that will infuriate those in Brussels who are in charge of fine-tuning the numerous details of the treaty still pending. With the Covid emergency over, the old problems are back on the agenda of political leaders and in Belfast the Brexit mess has long been a powder keg ready to erupt.
Edwin Poots is also leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and has independently decided to lift controls after talks with other parties have failed. To obtain legal authorization for such an important decision, he sought advice from a legal council, whose opinion he presented to Parliament in the Stormont building. “The council – he said – concluded that I can decide to cease the controls even in the absence of executive approval. I have now given a formal instruction to my permanent secretary to suspend from midnight tonight all controls that were not already in place on 31 December 2020 ”, the day of the entry into force of Brexit.
Sinn Féin, with which the DUP shares a majority, reacted harshly, speaking of an “illegal stunt” that only aims to garner more votes in the local elections in May. Deputy Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill tweeted: “This stunt is an attempt by the DUP to illegally interfere with national and international law.”
Despite the problems that will arise in the government majority, Poots has decided to move forward after having confirmed that the London government will not intervene to disprove it. Last week, Foreign Minister Liz Truss was on a visit to Belfast and allegedly assured that Westminster would not oppose Poots’ move, considering it a matter for the Northern Ireland executive. Truss has replaced Lord Frost, who resigned before Christmas in controversy with Boris Johnson, as head of Brexit negotiations.
Controls on food and agricultural products were decided under the Northern Ireland Protocol. Since the Good Friday peace agreements that put an end to the “troubles” in 1998 provide that there is no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, it was decided to solve the problem by moving the border with Europe between Ireland and Great Britain, with a legal and logistical mess that will never work.
British companies have to fill out a sea of paperwork to pass the customs controls required by the European Union that are implemented in Northern Ireland, so that goods can arrive in the Republic of Ireland, a member country of the EU, without having to cross a limits. Trucks line up and wait for hours, while new customs barriers prevent the export of seed potatoes from Britain and restrict the entry of garden products.
Poots’ decision has increased the confusion. Manufacturing Northern Ireland has advised all its members to continue to abide by the rules. “Regardless of the events, (our) legal and administrative advice is that these are international obligations for traders who should continue to fulfill those obligations,” reads a tweet.
The decision is likely to be withdrawn in the next few days, perhaps as early as the next few hours. However, it served to raise a crawl space and to warn the British government and European officials that the unresolved issues of Brexit must be addressed quickly, because they are all coming to a head, confirming how hasty the closing of the agreements was in December 2020, just before Covid forced everyone to think about other things for more than a year.
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