Brexit: Frost leaves door open for EU courts to have minor role in NI Protocol
Lord David Frost has today left the door open for the EU’s courts to still have a minor role in the post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol as negotiations over its implementation heat up again.
The UK’s Brexit minister, who wants the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to lose its role as the main arbiter of the protocol, refused to rule out a “Swiss-style” arrangement that has been floated as a possible solution.
The Financial Times reported that Frost’s team would consider this arrangement, which would see an independent arbitration body govern the protocol and the ECJ used to interpret aspects of EU law.
Negotiations over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol are ongoing, with Frost set for meetings this week with European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic to discuss their respective proposals on how to fix it.
The UK has threatened on many occasions to suspend the protocol if it is not changed to reduce checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea, which are creating political and economic tensions in Northern Ireland.
Frost also wants the ECJ to lose its role as the overseer of the treaty, telling Brussels that this is a deal breaker.
Speaking to MPs on the European Scrutiny Committee, Frost said: “We’re not interested in arrangements which keep the court by some other name … or in some other way.
“It’s highly unusual in an international treaty to have disputes settled in one of the courts of the parties. That’s the fundamental principle we take into this and the fundamental thing we need to remove as we move forward.”
When pressed on whether he would accept a minor role for the ECJ in the protocol as floated in the media today, he said: “The position that’s set out in the command paper is the fundamental one – we can’t have the court of one of the parties settling decisions and disputes between us. That is a relatively simple test and one we need to come out of this arrangement with.”
The protocol is a part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and sees Northern Ireland follow the EU’s customs union and single market rules, unlike the rest of the UK, in order to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
Both sides have now agreed that changes need to be made on how to implement it, with excessive red tape causing supermarket shortages in Northern Ireland this year.
The EU came forward with proposals to cut Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) controls – food safety checks – by 80 per cent and change laws to ensure medicines can easily be sent from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
Brussels has said that it will not completely re-write the treaty or change the ECJ’s right to govern it.
Frost said these proposals do not go far enough.