Ireland doubts UK will follow through with NI protocol threat

Dublin is not expecting the British government to make good on the warning issued by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that the UK will “ditch” the Northern Ireland protocol if the EU does not agree to “fix” it.

“We hope we can fix this thing”, Johnson said Friday, referring to the contentious component of the EU-UK divorce settlement designed to avoid a post-Brexit customs border between North and South.

London has called for it to be reconstituted to ease the import process but, while Brussels is due to respond to changes proposed by the UK earlier this year, it has ruled out a total renegotiation of the deal.

“The protocol could in principle work”, said Johnson.

“I want to see a real negotiation. I want to see the EU come to the table with some serious proposals to fix it,” he said, warning that if an agreement could not be reached, it would have to be ditched.

This would involve triggering Article 16, the clause which allows either party to unilaterally dispense with certain terms of the protocol, but stops short of allowing them to scrap the deal entirely.

Reacting to the threat, Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told RTÉ on Sunday: “My understanding is that the British government is not likely to trigger Article 16.”

“It would be a hugely problematic backward step in relationships between the UK government and the EU institutions at a time actually when we are trying to build trust,” he said.

(Molly Killeen | EURACTIV.com)