Member States Back COM's Legal Action, Risking Cooperation In Other Areas

At yesterday's Coreper II meeting of EU ambassadors, the representatives of national gov'ts voted in favour of the European Commission's proposal to launch legal action against the UK for Westminster's decision to unilaterally extend grace periods where checks are not required for certain food trade between GB and Northern Ireland.

• The legal action could come in the form of an infringement case taken to the European Court of Justice, or according to an EU diplomat talking to Politico "a dispute settlement process in the Withdrawal Agreement".
• Politico also quotes a diplomat saying that the row over NI grace periods could hit cooperation in other areas, saying "There is some encouragement for the Commission to take into account recent developments around the Northern Ireland protocol when taking a decision on equivalence on financial services,".
• This is a risk we raised in an MNI Political Risk Analysis article last week, 'NI Row Shows Legacy Brexit Issues'. In the article we stated "The lack of trust could manifest in different ways in the medium term. The UK could find it tougher to reach a deal with the EU on financial services [...] The UK is seeking equivalence with the EU in 28 sectors but achieving this is becoming less and less likely. Brussels has already demanded that the UK provide details on future plans for regulatory divergence from EU rules in order to proceed with the granting of equivalence. The unilateral action taken yesterday may see the EU rule that the UK cannot be trusted to stick to any plans offered and therefore might not allow UK-EU equivalence.