MNI: Key EU-UK Talks Remain Challenging As NI Poll Looms

Key sticking points in EU-UK talks aimed at resolving difficulties around the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol remain challenging as assembly elections loom in the province, EU officials say.

While EU Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic called for a strong partnership between the UK and EU to help face off Russian aggression against Ukraine, EU officials indicated that such wider considerations would not make them turn a blind eye to their ongoing concerns over trade flows between the UK and Northern Ireland.

“We still don’t have access to the IT systems that the EU was meant to have over a year ago. So, our ability to see what is moving is limited for that reason,” the official said.

SIGNIFICANT REDIRECTION

The same official underlined concerns that UK exporters are circumventing the EU Single Market controls, noting a “pretty significant redirection of trade flows from GB into the EU from ports in Ireland towards a movement of goods from GB into NI and onward into the EU.”

“The cause of that is the lighter checks not being done along that route and the protocol not being respected,” he said.

The risks that posed to the EU single market was currently limited, given that there is currently little divergence between EU and UK rules, the official said, but would become greater as the UK started to diverge away from EU regulations as the UK government has committed to do, he added.

ECJ TINKERING RULED OUT

Officials once again ruled out any “tinkering” with the role of the European Court of Justice in enforcing the Protocol and said that there had been “less progress” on Sanitary and Phytosanitary issues than on customs. He said there would be little progress on SPS topics until the UK acknowledged that the rules governing such trade flows had to be EU ones.

The official indicated that the EU would be likely to take a low profile during the election period in Northern Ireland, where voting is due to begin in early May.

“We have always made a point of taking a distance between ourselves and Northern Ireland politics and that will be even more so during a general election,” he said.

Northern Ireland's assembly elections will be held on the first Thursday in May, which, with a 6 week pre-poll campaign period, leaves little more than 5 weeks for London and Brussels to negotiate away from the electoral battlefield.