“Where there is a will, there is a deal!” Boris Johnson and Jean-Claude Junckerboth took to Twitter to announce that a Brexit deal has been struck between the EU and the UK as they gathered in Brussels for a crucial European Council summit.
Johnson was quick to call it “a new deal that takes back control” and urged the British parliament to approve it soon “so we can move on to other priorities like the cost of living, the NHS, violent crime and our environment”.
Many elements of the deal remain unchanged from the one Boris Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, agreed with Brussels in November 2018. The main differences are to be found on issues concerning Ireland.
Euronews reports that the deal that May agreed envisaged — in the event talks on a future trade deal failed to avoid a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland — the introduction of a backstop or fall-back position.
On customs, both sides agreed to a remarkable balancing act: Northern Ireland will officially be part of the U.K.’s customs territory, meaning that it applies U.K. tariffs and can participate in future British trade deals, but at the same time the EU-U.K. customs border is placed in the Irish Sea, meaning that de facto Northern Ireland follows the EU’s customs rules.
According to POLITICO, which labelled this as a fudge, U.K. customs authorities will check goods at British ports before they enter Northern Ireland. Those goods can pass without paying tariffs as long as their final destination is Northern Ireland and they are consequently “not at risk of entering the single market,” “However for goods at risk of entering the single market, U.K. authorities will apply the EU’s tariffs,” Barnier said.
The main advantage of this solution is that there are no checks at the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Northern Irish companies and farmers will follow EU customs and regulatory rules, meaning that Northern Irish products from machinery to milk can go across the border without having to pass any controls.
A future EU-U.K. trade deal could, however, streamline much of the customs checks or make them completely unnecessary. Barnier on Thursday defended the compromise as a “unique situation [that] must be dealt with using exceptional solutions.”
The new trading arrangements will take effect immediately after the Brexit transition period ends in December 2020 without any vote of consent in Northern Ireland. But after four years, Northern Ireland will have a say. Devising a mechanism of democratic consent underpins the deal and had been one of the major sticking points in negotiations.
Under the terms agreed, the Northern Irish Assembly will hold a vote within two months before that four-year period ends on whether to continue the arrangements or not. If it agrees by a simple majority, the trading rules will apply for a further four years. If the rules win “cross-community” support in the assembly, they will apply for a further eight years. Cross-community support would mean not only a simple majority across all members, but a majority among parties on each side of the republican-unionist divide, or the support of 60 percent of members, including 40 percent on each side.
However, if the vote on an extension fails even to win a simple majority, the new trading rules will only extend for two years. During that period the Joint Committee will have to work out a new system to keep the border open while protecting the single market. At a press conference introducing the deal Thursday, Barnier described that two years as a “cooling-off” period.
“This democratic support is a cornerstone of our newly agreed approach,” Barnier said. “Because this newly agreed proposal is no longer to be replaced by a subsequent agreement between the EU and the U.K., so it makes sense to ensure consent.” The new arrangements are envisaged as a permanent state, not a “backstop” that could be applied until an alternative were devised to replace it.
So what is new in the consent agreement? Nothing similar was formally proposed by Theresa May’s government. A detailed consent mechanism was first formulated under Johnson in the proposals he sent to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the beginning of October.
Via POLITICO / Euronews
