British prime minister in Northern Ireland to push for deal with EU

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is scheduled to arrive in Belfast on Tuesday to push forward an agreement reached with the European Union (EU) on Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trade status, which he sees as a “huge step forward”.

In an interview with the BBC, Sunak said he believes the deal “answers people’s concerns, it’s a huge step forward and very positive for the people of Northern Ireland”.

“One of the main achievements,” he stressed, “is the abolition of any concept of the border of the Irish Sea, so that when goods move from the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland, they circulate without customs bureaucracy, without routine.”

Sunak ensured that this would allow supermarkets to sell the same products in Northern Ireland as in the rest of the country, which was previously prohibited, namely in the case of chilled meats.

“I am confident that the Windsor Framework Agreement addresses these issues, but I also respect that everyone, including union representatives from all parties, will need time and space to consider the details,” he said.

Unionists, advocates of Northern Ireland’s status as a British territory, see the Northern Ireland Protocol, part of the UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union (EU) Agreement, as a threat to relations with the rest of the UK.

This text was found to be a solution to avoid the physical land border between a British province and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state, in order to comply with the 1998 peace accords.

The protocol brings Northern Ireland into line with the rules of the European single market and introduces customs controls on goods arriving from the rest of the UK.

In protest, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) refused to help form a new power-sharing government with Sinn Féin, which won the regional elections in May 2022.

Party leader Geoffrey Donaldson has already said that the DUP is “not in a hurry” to analyze in detail the text released on Monday and that he does not want to be rushed to decide whether he will support or oppose the agreement.

“I said progress has been made. We still have some concerns. We will look at the legal text, we will look at all this and come to a decision, ”he also told the BBC.

Donaldson assured the leaders were “reasonable” but wanted to “make sure that what the prime minister said is in line with what is really in the agreement.”

Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled at Windsor on Monday a framework agreement to reform the protocol, negotiated in 2019 by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which entails additional bureaucracy and causes political tension in the region.

The revised Protocol removes customs controls only for goods moving between the UK and Northern Ireland, but retains them for goods bound for the Republic of Ireland.

The text was well received both by Conservative MPs and the parliamentary opposition, as well as by the main sectors of the economy.

Sunak is meeting this afternoon with a parliamentary group to try to convince Eurosceptics within the party by impressing the conservative press.

“Rishi did the impossible?” the Daily Mail asks, with an editorial in The Sun tabloid declaring that the “sausage wars are over,” citing a previous protocol ban on the import of fresh processed meat products from the United Kingdom into Northern Ireland.

“Look who finally got Brexit and it wasn’t you, Boris,” proclaims The Independent, while The Times praises the “turning point.”

The Daily Telegraph admits that “the prime minister played a good tough game” and claims that Monday “was his best day.”