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Ireland

Ireland thinks Britain unlikely to trigger N.Ireland trade clause 

cde.news desk · 1 min read
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A defaced sign designates the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland on the A13 Road near Londonderry in Britain, 01 March 2019. Neither the UK nor the EU wants a hard border, and the Irish backstop is the mechanism that negotiators agreed upon to prevent that from happening. The open border, a now-invisible, 499-kilometer (310-mile) line running through countryside, farmland and bisecting main roads, is enshrined in an international peace deal that in 1998 helped to extinguish decades of sectarian and political violence in Northern Ireland; a period known as the Troubles. Over 3,000 people died during the Troubles, which saw unionist paramilitaries from largely Protestant areas, who identify as British, and republican militias from largely Catholic areas, who sought a re-unified Ireland, trade terror. Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019, two years after Prime Minister Theresa May invoked Article 50, the mechanism to notify the EU of her country's intention to abandon the member's club after the tightly-contested 2016 referendum. The results of that referendum exposed a divided nation. Leave won, claiming 52 percent of the overall vote. Voters in England and Wales came out in favor of leave, while Scotland and Northern Ireland plumped for remain. EPA-EFE/NEIL HALL ATTENTION: For the full PHOTO ESSAY text please see Advisory Notice epa07418899 , epa07418900

DUBLIN, Oct 2 (Reuters) – Ireland does not expect Britain to trigger a clause in Northern Ireland’s fraught post-Brexit trading deal to unilaterally jettison some of its terms, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday it was possible the British government would trigger “Article 16” if the European Union did not make appropriate concessions to ease the burden of trading restrictions on Northern Ireland.

Triggering Article 16, part of the Northern Ireland Protocol of Britain’s EU divorce deal, would mark a major escalation of the dispute and could lead to significant retaliatory measures.

Article 16 allows either side to unilaterally seek to dispense with some of the terms if they are proving unexpectedly harmful, but not for either side to scrap the protocol entirely.

“My understanding is that the British government is not likely to trigger Article 16,” Coveney told Irish state broadcaster RTE on Saturday.

“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 added.

(Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Reuters

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