The European Union has announced fresh legal action against the UK in response to the British government’s move to unilaterally scrap parts of an agreement governing Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements.
The Foreign Office said on June 13 that the UK’s move is intended to “fix parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol—making the changes necessary to restore stability and ensure the delicate balance of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement is protected.”
But European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic told reporters in Brussels on June 15 that the UK government had set out to “unilaterally break international law.”
The UK government’s plan would mean “breaking an agreement that protects peace and stability in Northern Ireland, an agreement reached together only three years ago” by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government and the EU, Sefcovic said.
He said the UK’s move is “illegal” and “extremely damaging to mutual trust and respect between the EU and the UK.”
“It has created deep uncertainty and casts a shadow over our overall cooperation, all at a time when respect for international agreements has never been more important,” Sefcovic said.
“That is why the Commission has today decided to take legal action against the UK for not complying with significant parts of the protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.”
As well as new legal action for alleged failures to implement the Northern Ireland Protocol as it stands, Sefcovic confirmed that existing infringement proceedings that had been paused while UK–EU talks took place would now be resumed.
Sefcovic said the EU’s door remained open to dialogue and urged the UK government “to show some political will to find joint solutions.”
But he emphasised the need for safeguards to protect the EU single market and said these conditions were not for the UK to change.
“It’s simply and legally and politically inconceivable that the UK government decides unilaterally what kind of goods can enter our single market,” he said.
Johnson signed the Northern Ireland Protocol with the EU in 2019 as part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, with the measures aimed at preventing a hard border on the island of Ireland.
But the protocol has been fiercely opposed by unionists in the British province, who complain that it effectively keeps Northern Ireland within the EU single market while erecting a border in the Irish Sea between the province and mainland Britain.
Northern Ireland has not had a functioning local government since February, when the Democratic Unionist Party, then the largest party in the regional assembly, withdrew from the power-sharing executive in protest against the protocol.
