Johnson says changes to Northern Ireland Protocol are ‘trivial’
Boris Johnson has downplayed planned UK changes to the post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol as a “trivial adjustment” amid EU fears they will breach international law.
Foreign secretary Liz Truss will today publish new legislation, which is expected to unilaterally override the protocol, despite warnings from the Irish government that this will represent a new low-point in relations.
The changes will seek to reduce the amount of checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
Johnson told LBC today that the UK has a “higher and prior legal commitment” to the Good Friday Peace Agreement.
“What we have to respect — and this is the crucial thing — the balance and the symmetry of the Belfast Good Friday agreement,” he said.
“And we have to understand there are two traditions in Northern Ireland, probably two ways of looking at the border issues, and one community at the moment feels very, very estranged from the way things are operating and very alienated. And we’ve just got to fix that.”
Negotiations between London and Brussels over the protocol have been deadlocked for months, after both sides last year agreed there needed to be changes to reduce the number of checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea.
Northern Ireland still follows 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.
Post-Brexit checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, enforced to protect the EU’s single market, have created economic and political disruption as unionists complain about a new border in the Irish Sea.
The planned changes will see a “dual track” system, which will only allow for checks on goods that will be sold on to the EU.
Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said the UK’s move will be “deeply damaging to relationships on these islands and between the UK and EU”.
There have been suggestions that Brussels could hit back by launching a trade war with the UK.
Johnson said this would be a “gross, gross overreaction” and a “perverse [and] preposterous” response”.
“All we’re trying to do is have some bureaucratic simplifications between Great Britain and Northern Ireland,” he said.