Simon Coveney - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

NI protocol tensions threaten UK-Ireland, UK-EU and UK-US relations

Pat Leahy Political Editor — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 04:24:21 +0000

Coveney says there is ‘some strain’ between governments – understatement of the year.

Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson (2R) and his wife Carrie Johnson (R) walk with US president Joe Biden and US First Lady Jill Biden prior to a bilateral meeting at Carbis Bay, Cornwall. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty

If relations between the three points of the Brexit triangle of Dublin, London, and Brussels were dodgy before this week, they have deteriorated further in recent days as the temperature rises over the Northern Ireland protocol.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, admitted that there was “some strain in the relationship between Dublin and London” over the protocol. Understatement of the year. Relations between the two governments have not been as poor since the days when Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street and Charles Haughey was in Merrion Street.

Privately some senior officials, who, prior to Brexit, delighted in the diplomatic and political achievement of better relations between Ireland and the UK than at any time since Independence, are aghast at the state of play.

But it is what it is. Politicians are taking pot-shots at each other, officials are briefing against each other’s governments with accusations that the other is endangering the peace process and charges of sheer hypocrisy. Some senior figures are aghast at the state of Anglo-Irish relations and old hands warn that the peace process only flourishes and Northern Ireland only makes progress when the two governments are working in lockstep; right now, it looks like the opposite of that.

Reneging

The connected relationship between the EU and the UK is even worse. The EU is accusing the UK of reneging on an agreement and warns that it will take legal steps to seek redress. The UK’s position is that the EU has adopted a more legalistic and nitpicking approach than the UK thought it would when it agreed the protocol. “They have taken an approach that is less discretionary than we thought they would,” says one senior Downing Street official. The UK’s Brexit minister David Frost says that Britain “underestimated the effect” of the Northern Ireland protocol.

But this is completely dismissed on the Irish and the EU side. Even some formerly at the heart of the British government eye it with skepticism. Former permanent secretary at the department for exiting the EU Philip Rycroft told Times Radio this week: “Take that with a large pinch of salt. The UK side knew exactly what they were signing up to. The UK has to accept responsibility.”

But the UK side is clear in its accusation that it is the EU that is failing to take account of the special circumstances in Northern Ireland, and say that the EU’s understanding of the North – and indeed, of the wider UK – is sketchy. The EU doesn’t realize – or doesn’t care – that the checks on goods entering the North make unionists “feel less British”, says one senior UK official.

EU negotiators often refer to Northern Ireland as being in the EU, the British say, with barely concealed irritation. They describe an approach characterized as “we decide who gets access to our market and Northern Ireland is now part of our market”, in the words of one senior official.

Irish and EU officials almost shout: this is what you agreed.

Coveney put it more sharply on Thursday: “When we have Lord Frost visiting Northern Ireland and saying the protocol is not sustainable, that is a problem, when he was the person who negotiated the protocol,” he said.

“It’s impossible to overstate the annoyance with the British behaviour on the North,” says one senior Irish official. Another says that the Irish Government has conveyed the message to the British: “If you’re seeking to push things to the limit, you’re nearly there.”

Seething

And London is seething that Dublin persuaded US president Joe Biden to intervene, sending an unprecedented diplomatic rebuke to Boris Johnson’s government over its treatment of the protocol, and the implications for the peace process.

The message followed a lengthy meeting between Coveney and the US national security adviser Jake Sullivan at Shannon Airport recently. Internal Irish Government readouts of the meeting suggested that the American tone was “what can we do to help?”

The British reaction can be gauged by the headline in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday: “Joe Biden should keep his sneering anti-British, anti-Brexit views to himself.”

Having applied a wrecking ball to the UK-Ireland and the UK-EU relationship, Brexit is now taking its toll on the “special relationship”. As it hosts the G7 meeting this weekend, the UK looks more isolated than ever.

Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/ni-protocol-tensions-threaten-uk-ireland-uk-eu-and-uk-us-relations-1.4589953

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Johnson faces new constitutional crisis as Brexit talks grind to a halt

Heather Stewart, Severin Carrell, Daniel Boffey and Lisa O'Carroll — Sat, 05 Oct 2019 21:18:48 +0000

It appears increasingly unlikely PM will hit deadline for deal laid down in Benn act.

With a Brexit delay forced on him, Johnson could fight a general election on a platform of a hard Brexit. Photograph: Han Yan/Xinhua/Barcroft Media

Boris Johnson is careering towards a fresh constitutional crisis, after insisting there will be “no delay” to Brexit just hours after government lawyers promised in a court in Scotland that he w ould obey the law and request an extension if he failed to clinch a deal within a fortnight.

The prime minister tweeted that there must be “new deal or no deal – but no delay”, echoing the words he used in his party conference speech in Manchester on Wednesday.

The dramatic scenes in court came as Brexit negotiations all but ground to a halt after the EU rebuffed UK requests for them to intensify over the weekend. It now appears increasingly likely Johnson will fail to hit the deadline for a deal laid down in what he calls the “surrender act”.

EU sources said there remained considerable doubt as to whether there was any basis for such discussions, given Johnson’s insistence on there being a customs border on the island of Ireland.

Meanwhile, Julian Smith, the Northern Ireland secretary, was told by a series of senior figures in Belfast that the “Stormont lock” envisaged in the proposal is unworkable, setting up a race against time to rework that aspect of the plan in time for the 17 October European council meeting.

The European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act, drawn up by rebel MPs and passed by parliament, states that if Westminster does not agree to a Brexit deal by 19 October, the prime minister has to write to the EU seeking an extension to article 50 until 31 January.

In extracts of legal papers submitted by the government to the court of session in Edinburgh, that emerged on Friday in a case brought by anti-Brexit campaigners, the government appeared to accept for the first time that it would have to make the request.

The papers, which the government declined to publish in full, stated that the prime minister accepts “he is subject to the public law principle that he cannot frustrate its purpose or the purpose of its provisions. Thus he cannot act so as to prevent the letter requesting the specified extension in the act from being sent.”

Campaigners brought the legal action to force Johnson to comply with the requirements of the act, also known as the Benn Act, after a series of suggestions from Downing Street sources that Johnson believes he has found a loophole in the law that will allow him to leave the EU on 31 October regardless.

The UK government refused to release copies of its submissions in this case to the media despite repeated requests by the Guardian, the BBC, and other news organizations.

Key excerpts of its pledge were read out instead by Aidan O’Neill QC, the lawyer for the green energy millionaire Dale Vince, the SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, and the lawyer and anti-Brexit campaigner Jolyon Maugham QC.

O’Neill told Lord Pentland, the judge hearing the case, that Johnson had repeatedly contradicted that position, including in the Commons on Wednesday, by insisting the UK would leave on 31 October “come what may”.

As a result, O’Neill said, the court still needed to issue legally binding orders to force Johnson to comply with the Benn Act in an interdict or injunction. If the prime minister refused to do so, O’Neill could return to court to ask for Johnson to be fined or jailed, he added. Pentland is due to give his ruling on Monday.

No 10 declined to comment. Yet senior government figures, including some cabinet ministers, continue to insist privately that while they will obey the law as narrowly interpreted, they can still avoid any delay to Brexit.

An attempt to circumvent the law would almost certainly result in another bitter court battle for the government – but Johnson’s allies hope he could thereby present himself as the man trying to “get Brexit done” in the face of obstructionist remainers.

With a Brexit delay forced on him, Johnson could then fight a general election on a platform of a hard Brexit.

Senior government insiders suggest that to confront the challenge from the Brexit party, the Conservatives would have to promise to strike an even tougher bargain than the one the prime minister is currently offering to Brussels.

The backbench rebels who drew up the Benn bill hoped to avert a no-deal Brexit, but Johnson has angrily accused them of undermining the government’s negotiating position.

In Brussels on Friday, a European Commission spokeswoman said: “We have completed discussions with the UK for today. We gave our initial reaction to the UK’s proposals and asked many questions on the legal text.

“We will meet again on Monday to give the UK another opportunity to present its proposals in detail.” The spokeswoman added that the proposals did not “provide a basis for concluding an agreement”.

A senior EU diplomat said: “If we held talks at the weekend, it would look like these were proper negotiations. The truth is we’re still a long way from that. We need to work out quickly whether there is the opportunity to close that gap.”

But the Irish deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, speaking after a meeting in Belfast with the Northern Ireland secretary, struck a more upbeat note, saying a deal was “not mission impossible”.

“I believe it is possible to change that [approach including the old backstop] but we have to make sure that while we change the approach the outcome has got to be the same,” he said, adding that he believed “it’s possible to do that with goodwill and energy on all sides” next week.

But Smith was told by several parties at the meeting that the proposal, backed by the DUP, to give the devolved government the final say on Brexit arrangements in the region after Brexit was a non-starter.

One source with knowledge of the meeting said: “The message has gone back from all quarters in Northern Ireland from Sinn Féin to the Traditional Unionist Voice that this is unworkable and it will destabilize the institutions and the Good Friday agreement and is not plausible – and in light of that, if he is serious about getting a deal, he has to come back with something more realistic.”

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Brexit deal IMPOSSIBLE: ‘Rigid’ EU were NEVER going to negotiate with UK claims professor

Katie Weston — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 12:12:22 +0000

NO-DEAL Brexit is currently looking “very likely” as the European Union are so “rigid” and “uncompromising” in their stance on the backstop, claims professor David Collins.

Britain is beginning to see that it was “never really possible” to negotiate with the EU in a “pragmatic way”, claims an expert. David Collins, a professor in International Economic Law at City, University of London, added that a no-deal Brexit is now looking “very likely”. Speaking on the possibility, Professor Collins told RT: “No deal is looking very likely at this point. Now I hope that isn’t what happens, I hope that some kind of deal is organised and I’ve said all along I’d like there to be a free trade agreement.

“But I think now it’s looking very unlikely, the EU is so unwilling to negotiate, they’re so rigid in their position, they’re so uncompromising and that’s really frustrating.

“I think we’re now beginning to see all along that it was never really possible to negotiate with them in a pragmatic way.”

The City University lecturer added: “I think the EU would be harmed by a no deal quite possibly worse than we would be, and that’s not the outcome that we want.

“But I think, and again, the EU seems to be so reluctant to give in, it also seems to be a point of policy with them though, we just don’t negotiate.

Brexit news: an International Economic Law Professor said no deal is “very likely” (Image: RT UK/Twitter/Getty)

“But if they do it will be at the very end.”

Referring to the likelihood of the EU altering the wording on the backstop earlier in the programme, Professor Collins said: “Well if they do it it will be likely at the very last minute I think, and it will be a question of who blinks first.

“But I have a feeling what the EU ultimately offers is still not going to be not very much.

“I don’t think they will remove the backstop so the question is if they put a time limit on the backstop of three, five years is that enough to get through Parliament, and I strongly doubt it really.”

The comments come as Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister is preparing to travel to Washington as Dublin seeks backup from Congress to block a no-deal Brexit.

Simon Coveney, who also serves as foreign minister, will make the trip to the US next week to meet with Irish-American lawmakers behind a move to oppose the return of a hard border in Ireland.

The planned talks come just days after MPs in Westminster voted to scrap the backstop designed to avoid a hard border and replace it with “alternative arrangements”.

On the day of the vote, congressman Brendan Boyle put forward a resolution which, if backed, could see the US Congress formally oppose the reimposition of border checks in Ireland, The Irish Times reports.

Mr Boyle told the Irish newspaper: “I felt that this was the right time for the US Congress to state publicly what many of us have been saying privately for some time.

“The Good Friday Agreement is one of the great foreign policy achievements of the 20th century. It eliminated the hard border that then existed between Northern Ireland the rest of Ireland.

“Now Brexit threatens this.”

Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1080882/brexit-news-theresa-may-deal-eu-no-deal-latest-ireland-backstop-uk-european-union-juncker

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Britain and Ireland remain at odds over Brexit and the border with Northern Ireland

Reuters via PRI — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 20:25:54 +0000

Anti-Brexit protesters wave EU and Union flags outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, Nov. 14, 2017.
Credit: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

Ireland and Britain remained at odds on Monday on how to progress talks on the Irish border with a week to go before London could face failure in persuading European Union leaders to open trade talks at a December Brexit summit.

The EU handed Prime Minister Theresa May a 10-day “absolute deadline” on Friday to improve her divorce terms and meet three key conditions, including on the border between EU-member Ireland and Britain’s province of Northern Ireland.

Before it can sign off on the first phase of talks, the Irish government wants Britain to spell out in writing how it intends to make good on its commitment that the 300-mile border will remain as seamless post-Brexit as it is today.

Dublin and EU officials say the best way to avoid a “hard border” is to keep regulations the same north and south and that this needs to be agreed in phase one, but a spokesman for May reiterated on Monday that a solution can only be concluded in the second phase of talks.

“We remain firmly committed to avoiding any physical infrastructure but the secretary of state (Brexit minister David Davis) was also clear that we will only be able to conclude them finally in the context of the future relationship,” he told reporters.

May’s spokesman repeated that the whole of the United Kingdom will leave the EU’s single market and customs union but Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said it seemed impossible to Dublin that some form of hard border could be avoided if there are diverging regulatory regimes north and south.

“It’s simply not credible to say on the one hand that we are going to have a frictionless border and at the same time that all of Britain, including Northern Ireland, is going to leave the customs union, the single market without giving any reassurance on the avoidance of regulatory divergence,” he told national broadcaster RTE.

With the possibility of Ireland vetoing progress on the talks dominating some newspaper front pages in Britain, Coveney added that Dublin would not need to use its veto if it remained dissatisfied since it has the backing of all other EU states.

“We don’t need to use a veto because we have complete solidarity on this issue. It is clear to us that if there is not progress on the Irish border, we will not be moving onto phase two in December and that was reinforced to me as late as last Friday by very senior EU leaders,” he said.

Source: https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-11-27/britain-and-ireland-remain-odds-over-brexit-and-border-northern-ireland

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