The British government said it will study the detail of the European Commission’s proposals for checks on goods moving from Britain to Northern Ireland and would look at them seriously and constructively.
“The next step should be intensive talks on both our sets of proposals, rapidly conducted, to determine whether there is common ground to find a solution,” a government spokesman said.
“Significant changes which tackle the fundamental issues at the heart of the Protocol, including governance, must be made if we are to agree a durable settlement which commands support in Northern Ireland. We need to find a solution which all sides can get behind for the future, which safeguards the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, and which puts the UK-EU relationship on a stronger footing. We are ready to work hard with this in mind.”
Britain this week submitted legal texts to the Commission based on last July’s command paper calling for sweeping changes to the protocol. Elements of Britain’s proposal, such as introducing a dual regulation system for goods circulating in Northern Ireland and removing the enforcement role of the European courts would require changes to the text of the protocol.
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Earlier on Wednesday, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings said the British government had always intended to “ditch” the protocol. Mr Cummings, who was at the meeting between Mr Johnson and Leo Varadkar in October 2019 which agreed the framework of the protocol, said the deal was done against the background of a constitutional crisis.
“So we wriggled [through] with the best option we [could] and intended to ditch bits we didn’t like after whacking Corbyn,” he said in a series of tweets.
“It was international diplomacy vs people trying to cut our balls off. Of course there wasn’t ‘good faith’… cheating foreigners is a core part of the job.”
Unilateral suspension
Mr Cummings said his claims did not mean that Mr Johnson was lying when he agreed to the protocol because “he never had a scoobydoo what the deal he signed meant”. He said Lord Frost should now introduce legislation similar to abandoned clauses in the Internal Market Act which would have unilaterally suspended the protocol.
In a speech in Lisbon on Tuesday, chief Brexit negotiator David Frost called for a "new protocol" and said removing the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was central to Britain's demands.
“The role of the European Court of Justice and the EU institutions in Northern Ireland create a situation where there appears to be no discretion about how provisions in the protocol are implemented. The Commission’s decision to launch infraction proceedings against us earlier this year at the very first sign of disagreement shows why these arrangements won’t work in practice,” he said.
“But it is not just about the Court. It is about the system of which the Court is the apex – the system which means the EU can make laws which apply in Northern Ireland without any kind of democratic scrutiny or discussion.”
