Agreement between London and Brussels on the rules for trade flows with Northern Ireland

Great Britain ed European Union have reached an agreement on this the Northern Ireland trade agreements (remained tied to the rules of the European single market even after Brexit, in order to be able to keep the border with the Republic of Ireland open according to the provisions of the historic peace of Good Friday of 1998). The issue has been hotly debated between London and Brussels for over a year. The terms of the deal are yet to be made public but the parties have agreed on measures to ease trade flows between England and Northern Ireland by easing the constraints previously introduced by the former prime minister’s government Boris Johnson. The policy of incumbent Prime Minister Rishi Sunak it is instead that of mending ties and relations with the EU, also in the light of the heavy repercussions that the separation is having on the British economy and society. “The agreement has been reached, the deal is done,” said a high-ranking Tory government official quoted by the Bbc. The announcement came on the sidelines of the summit underway in Windsor between British Prime Minister Sunak and the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. A little later it also arrived the confirmation of EU sources.

According to anticipations, the protocol is being revised – although not technically modified, in the official version of Brussels intended to safeguard the initial EU position against a formal change of the text – through a series of new shared interpretations. Interpretations of a substantial nature with respect to the requests made by London to lighten the originally envisaged commitments: starting with cancellation of routine checks imposed on paper by the Protocol in the initial version for les goods in transit between Northern Ireland and the British domestic market, through a new automatic system of “red” and “green” lanes.

The ‘Windsor Framework’, the new agreement reached today between the UK and the EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol, allows the beginning of a “new chapter” in relations between London and Brussels. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this during a press conference in Windsor with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, echoing a very similar statement previously made by the prime minister.