EU drafting Northern Ireland trade plan

Trucks leaving Larne Port in the North. The EU will offer greater flexibility in shipping pharmaceuticals into the North.

The European Union is drafting proposals to address British concerns about trade flows between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK to be presented by next week.

The EU will offer greater flexibility in shipping pharmaceuticals into the North and the process for inspecting food products while simplifying customs checks and providing a bigger role for local institutions, according to a senior EU official.

Maros Sefcovic, the top EU negotiator with the UK, broadly confirmed those areas saying the bloc is trying to address difficulties that people in Northern Ireland are facing after Brexit.

“That means long-term solutions in the food and plant safety,” Mr Sefcovic, a vice president of the European Commission, said. “I heard businesses ask for further trade facilitations in the area of customs. And I also heard a lot about the need for Northern Irish political institutions and other stakeholders to be properly heard. One issue of vital importance to me occurred throughout my visit is finding a solution for the continued supply of medicines to Northern Ireland.” 

That’s still a long way short of UK demands that the EU scrap the Northern Ireland Protocol, which governs trade flows between Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the post-Brexit period. The EU has said that it won’t renegotiate the protocol, but is willing to make adjustments to ease bottlenecks between Britain and Northern Ireland.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson agreed to customs check between the two parts of the UK as part of his Brexit accord with the EU so that most of the UK could be free of EU regulations without creating a hard border on the island of Ireland. Howeve, since signing the deal, Johnson has refused to implement key elements of the protocol and has unilaterally extended the grace period designed to ease the transition on two occasions.

Unless the EU backs down in the next few weeks, the UK is threatening to invoke Article 16 of the protocol, which gives either side the right to suspend parts of the agreement if it causes “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties.” In that instance, the EU would have the right to take reciprocal measures to safeguard the integrity of the single market and that could disrupt the broader trading relationship between the two sides.

Mr Sefcovic said he expects intense negotiations with the UK through the rest of the month and into November.

“I think it’s in the best interest of both of us that we will try to find a reasonable solution before the ends of the year into next year,” he said.

Another European diplomat said the EU could challenge the UK’s right to invoke Article 16 under the current circumstances and it could lead to a drawn-out legal tussle.

The European Commission considers that the UK hasn’t done enough to demonstrate that it intends to honour its obligations under the protocol. While European officials have been given access to the computer systems which register goods entering Northern Ireland, the UK hasn’t made progress on building the physical infrastructure needed for the border checks.

• Bloomberg