The UK and European Union have made significant progress toward a deal on new post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland — but more work is still needed to finalize an agreement, the region’s political parties said Friday.
(Bloomberg) — The UK and European Union have made significant progress toward a deal on new post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland — but more work is still needed to finalize an agreement, the region’s political parties said Friday.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held a series of meetings with leaders in Belfast to discuss the status of talks aimed at resolving the issue of how goods move between the region and the rest of the UK — the biggest hangover from Britain’s EU exit three years ago.
At stake are the UK’s relationship with its biggest trading partner and the future of Northern Ireland’s devolved government. Both are in flux because the Democratic Unionist Party has blocked formation of the power-sharing administration in protest against the so-called Protocol, the part of the wider Brexit deal governing Northern Ireland trade.
“Progress has been made across a range of areas, but there are still some areas where further work is required,” the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson told reporters following his meeting with Sunak and Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris.
While Sunak held short meetings with other parties, his discussion with the DUP appeared to last almost two hours. Donaldson said his party needs to see an agreement that removes trade barriers with Great Britain and is “hopeful that that can happen.” His party will await the final text of a deal before deciding whether it’s prepared to give its seal of approval.
The DUP’s verdict is the most keenly anticipated by Northern Ireland-watchers, and the party has set seven tests it wants any accord to pass before making a decision. Resuming devolved government in Northern Ireland is a key plank of the Good Friday Agreement, a regional peace deal signed in 1998 that largely ended decades of unrest in the region.
Sunak told parties in Belfast that no deal has yet been finalized, according to Claire Hanna of the Social Democratic and Labour Party and Doug Beattie of the Ulster Unionist Party. Nationalist party Sinn Fein reported “significant” progress.
Beattie told reporters that Sunak told him there “may be something this weekend” but cautioned that there may be a “stumbling block that may push it on for another week or so.” Sunak was confident that any deal he puts on the table will be “a deal that unionism can accept,” Beattie said.
For her part, Hanna told Bloomberg after her meeting with Sunak that “we assume he’s going through these motions so he can go back to the EU and say ‘I have a final request.’”
“They are upselling,” Hanna said. “The EU is basically saying this is a minor implementation change and the UK is saying this is substantial change. The truth is somewhere in between.”
Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald told reporters that “very very significant progress has been made and I believe that a deal is absolutely possible,” following her meeting with Sunak.
Diplomatic Flurry
Friday’s outreach is part of a wider series of meetings that appear geared toward finalizing a deal between the UK and the EU.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly met European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic Friday, and will also meet Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin. Martin is then scheduled to talk with Sefcovic in Brussels on Sunday.
Bloomberg reported this week that the UK and EU expect to announce an agreement in the coming days. It could come early next week, the person familiar said. Sunak is expected to hold talks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the Munich Security Conference in Germany this weekend, where Brexit would be discussed, they added.
UK and EU negotiators were nearing a provisional agreement on a solution for the years-long disagreement on the Protocol at the end of January. The two sides had been locked in intensive negotiations for weeks, with officials close to a deal covering most pending issues, including on customs, state aid and sanitary checks on agri-food goods.
If a deal is finalized, Sunak will have to walk a political tightrope — as well as convincing unionists he will want to win over hard-line Brexit-backers among his own ruling Conservatives in Westminster.
Court Concerns
Sunak’s government believes the deal will meet the DUP’s seven tests — which include demands to avoid diversion of trade and to give people in Northern Ireland a say in making the laws which govern them.
There’s a further domestic challenge for Sunak in selling any agreement to his own Conservative Party. The so-called European Research Group of Conservative MPs says it will oppose any agreement that allows the European Court of Justice to maintain jurisdiction on matters of EU law in Northern Ireland.
David Jones, a Tory MP who is part of the ERG, warned Sunak in a tweet Thursday that Northern Ireland “must cease to be subject to laws made in Brussels.”
“Anything less won’t work,” he said.
–With assistance from Peter O’Dwyer and Alex Wickham.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.