Outstanding members of the UK Conservative Party have warned the Prime Minister British, Boris Johnsonwhich may face a rebellion in Parliament if it decides pass a law to unilaterally suspend the Protocol for Northern Ireland agreed with the European Union (EU).
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“There are many colleagues who will not support this. We can’t go around breaking international agreements that we don’t like.“, affirmed a former conservative official to the newspaper The Timeswho did not reveal his identity.
(You are interested in: Northern Ireland again causes tensions between London and Brussels)
Another “tory” predicted that even if the House of Commons (lower) approves legislation of this nature, the text would end up “shredded” in the House of Lords (upper), which in recent years has acted as a counterweight to stop some of the most drastic proposals in the framework of ‘Brexit’.
own Theresa May, the prime minister who began negotiating with Brussels the British exit from the community bloc, has criticized the possibility of London breaching a crucial part of the agreement reached by both sides of the English Channel.
May warned about “what a movement like that would say about the UK and its willingness to honor treaties.”
Before the British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, and the Vice President of the European Commission (EC) for Institutional Relations, Maros Sefcovic, resume the negotiation on the Northern Ireland Protocol in a telephone conversation on Thursday, speculations have increased about the possibility that the British Government take further steps to abolish the provisions which it considers problematic.
The Protocol requires customs controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom with the aim of avoiding a border between the two Irelands, as required by the 1998 peace agreements in the region.
Johnson, who agreed to Brexit terms that came into force in January 2021, now argues that the Protocol creates too much friction in Northern Ireland and requires Brussels to amend it.
The situation has worsened after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has decided to block the formation of a government in the British province if the agreement with Brussels is not changed.
At the end of 2020, the British Government has already brought legislation to Parliament that opened the door to breaching the pact on Northern Ireland (Internal Market Act), although it withdrew some of the most controversial articles from the text after being rejected by the House of Lords.
If the United Kingdom decided to unilaterally break the Northern Ireland Protocol, the EU could reactivate the legal process it had initiated against the Internal Market Act, which was suspended in July.
It could also impose tariffs on British goods, threatening to spark a trade war between the two sides of the channel, and even completely suspend the Trade and Cooperation Agreement that sets the terms on which the UK left the bloc.
Ireland’s warning
The Republic of Ireland warned on Wednesday that British threats to unilaterally remove post-Brexit customs controls in neighboring Northern Ireland were “very badly received” in the European Unionheralding a new clash between London and Brussels.
London appears to be preparing the ground for the forthcoming announcement of a bill that would remove some key provisions of the so-called “Northern Ireland protocol” negotiated between the EU and the UK under Brexit.
“We do not believe that … the remaining problems can be solved” by unilateral measures, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said.
It must be done “through cooperation”, “dialogue” and “working together in a way that allows both parties to move forward”, he added during a visit to Belfast, the capital of that British region.
The protocol, aimed at avoiding a new physical border on the island that threatens the fragile peace concluded in 1998 after three decades of bloody conflict, while protecting the integrity of the European single market, is considered by Northern Irish unionists as a threat to their place within the United Kingdom.
The Republican Sinn Fein party, a former political arm of the armed group IRA, won regional elections last week for the first time since the partition of the island a century ago.
But the unionists of the DUP – with whom they must share power under the peace agreement – refuse to form a new executive until the protocol is modified.
“The Commission has shown a willingness to compromise and wants the current technical discussions to provide solutions and a common ground,” Coveney said.
But “we see that London” is heading “towards a violation of international law” with the elimination of parts of an international treaty signed by both parties, he insisted.
His British counterpart, Liz Truss, said in a statement Tuesday that European proposals to amend the protocol “have failed to address the real problems in Northern Ireland and in some cases have made the situation worse.”
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE and AFP
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