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Brexit Minister Lord Frost said it was difficult to see how the Northern Ireland Protocol could survive in its current form.
His comments came after outgoing DUP chief Edwin Poots said he had received personal assurance from the UK government that significant changes would be made to the Northern Ireland protocol.
Poots, who was forced to announce his resignation as leader last week following an internal party revolt over his decision to proceed with the appointment of a Stormont premier, predicted that there would be a significant victory over the protocol in July.
Lord Frost is reportedly not drawn to the private conversations between UK ministers and Poots, but accused the European Union of not being pragmatic enough to make the protocol work.
“An important victory to be won”
The UK government and the EU are grappling with a dispute over the implementation of the protocol, the part of the Brexit divorce deal aimed at avoiding a hard border with Ireland.
Poots told the BBC: I have been assured that there will be changes to the protocol and that it will be very important, that the UK government will not tolerate how things are and how the EU has behaved from the protocol.
He added: We expect these changes to happen in July, most likely in early July.
We believe there is a significant victory to be achieved over the protocol. I will hand over the baton at the end of June (to the new DUP chief) and I hope that most of the work will actually be done at this point and that we can make those gains.
Poots said the promise of a meaningful victory had been made by Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis.
When asked what the nature of the changes he was promised was, Poots admitted we didn’t have any details, but the issues to be resolved were with the constitutional status of Northern Ireland.
Sausage war
When asked about Poots’ comments, Lord Frost told the House of Commons Committee on Foreign Affairs: I cannot comment on private conversations and accounts of them. But we made no secret of the fact that we are struggling to see how, as currently exploited, important elements of the protocol are sustainable. I don’t think this is a new judgment. We have also said that we are looking at all of our options, and we are doing it.
There is a real timeline of things that needs to be taken into account when we do this.
This is where we are at the moment, we are actively studying options to deal with a situation that is difficult to consider sustainable.
The UK has threatened to unilaterally suspend parts of the deal if it continues to cause problems, which would trigger retaliation from Brussels.
One of the impacts of the deal is that deliveries of chilled meats, including sausages and burgers, could effectively be banned from crossing the Irish Sea from Britain to Northern Ireland in the end. of the month.
The UK has officially called for an extension of this grace period to avoid a so-called sausage war and Lord Frost said both sides are very actively considering it.
Lord Frost insisted that the impact on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland could not have been predicted despite pre-Brexit warnings of the kind of hardship that could be caused.
The fundamental problem is that the crippling effect on goods transported from Britain to Northern Ireland is strong enough, he said.
Until we started implementing the protocol, no one could really know.
He said both sides were supposed to do their best to reduce checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland, but accused the EU of showing a lack of pragmatism and reason.
If their approach is just to say you just have to implement the EU customs code as if it were any other EU external border, obviously we have a problem, a- he declared.
Farewell to Poots
Trade unionists are opposed to the protocol and have repeatedly called for its removal.
In an interview with the BBC, Poots said he made the appointment of Paul Givan as prime minister last week because he believed he could more effectively oppose the protocol with a functional Assembly.
He said: I am focusing on the Northern Ireland Protocol because that is what makes a constitutional difference for Northern Ireland.
In response, Sinn Fein MP for North Belfast John Finucane said Poots had not provided any details of the proposed changes he had been promised.
It is not in the gift of the Secretary of State what he does with the protocol, it is an agreement that his government has concluded with the European Union.
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