The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, will meet this Monday to “work in person” on the protocol that will govern post-Brexit customs controls in Northern Ireland. .
On this Sunday afternoon, the BBC previewed that an announcement on the agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom is “imminent” and that this may become known in detail this Monday.
For now, the scenario gains strength with the announcement of Von der Leyen, who explains in a statement that he will go to the United Kingdom to seek “practical and shared solutions to the wide range of complex challenges” surrounding the protocol.
The BBC also adds that the Conservative and Labor deputies were also called to appear in Parliament this Monday.
The Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, had already announced this Saturday that the negotiations on post-Brexit customs controls in Northern Ireland were coming to an end.
“It is true that the deal is not finalized yet, but I think we are getting closer to its conclusion,” Leo Varadkar told Irish television RTE.
The Northern Ireland protocol is the main issue of tension between London and Brussels, three years after the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU (Brexit).
This protocol, negotiated at the same time as the Brexit treaty, keeps Northern Ireland, which has Britain’s only land border with the EU, in the single European market, while establishing customs controls between Northern Ireland and the rest from United Kingdom.
The text aims to preserve the integrity of the single European market and the 1998 peace agreement, which put an end to 30 years of conflict on the island of Ireland, preventing the return of a rigid customs border between the Republic of Ireland (a member of the EU and occupies a large part of the island) and Northern Ireland (region under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and which occupies the remaining part of the island of Ireland, to the northeast).
The UK decided to legislate to unilaterally reverse the protocol’s customs provisions, prompting the EU to start new negotiations in 2022.
London calls on the EU to ease customs checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
The Democratic Unionist Party, the largest of Northern Ireland’s unionist political parties, opposes any application of European law in the region.
Source: TSF
