Northern Ireland Protocol: Hopes are growing for a new UK-EU trade deal

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There is hope on all sides that a new post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and the EU will soon be agreed.

Negotiations on the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol have intensified in recent days.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly met EU chief negotiator Maro Efovi in ​​Brussels and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak flew to Belfast for talks with political leaders.

Sunak said negotiations between London and Belfast to save the protocol were progressing but there was still “work to be done”.

“Well, the test I have set for myself is that we protect Northern Ireland’s place in our internal market, that we protect the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, that we solve the practical problems that the protocol poses to families and businesses,” the Prime Minister said. explains the Minister.

And even Northern Ireland’s most intransigent political parties, namely the Democratic Unionist Party, are relatively hopeful that a solution can be found.

“The decisions that will be taken by the Prime Minister and by the European Commission will lead Northern Ireland to more division or pave the way for healing and the restoration of political institutions,” the leader of the DUP told reporters. Jeffrey Donaldson.

These institutions, a key pillar of a peace deal that ended 30 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, have been out of action for nearly a year due to union opposition to the protocol as it stands. present.

Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein generally approves of post-Brexit trade rules. But party leader Mary Lou McDonald said it was entirely possible to strike a deal to resolve the dispute over them.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a border with an EU member country, the Republic of Ireland.

When the UK left the bloc in 2020, the UK government and the EU agreed to keep the Irish border free of customs posts and other checks, as an open border is a key pillar of the peace process which ended the violence.

Instead, some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK are checked, but British Unionist politicians there are fiercely opposed to these arrangements.

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