The EU’s top official in charge of post-Brexit relations, Maroš Sefčovič, said that honesty was needed from the UK over the Northern Ireland protocol, as he accused the government of failing to engage with EU proposals to make the agreement work.



Speaking to British and European parliamentarians in Brussels, Sefčovič struck a more strident note than an earlier statement on Thursday about a phone call with the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss. He said:

Honesty about what the UK signed up to is needed. Honesty about the fact that the EU cannot solve all the problems created by Brexit and the type of Brexit that the UK government chose. That is the reason for which the position of the EU has been consistent. We will not renegotiate the protocol.

In recent days, tensions have soared over the Northern Ireland protocol, the Brexit agreement that keeps the region in the EU single market, customs union and under the jurisdiction of the European court of justice.

Boris Johnson signed the agreement with the EU in 2019, but his government has since sought to renegotiate the deal, leading to proposals from the European Commission to lighten customs checks last October.

Sefčovič said the EU proposed “an ambitious calendar” in February to accelerate these talks, but that there had “been no engagement at all on these issues from the UK the last couple of months”.

Discussions on the Northern Ireland protocol slowed down before the Stormont assembly elections on 5 May.

Responding to Sefčovič, the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Ellis, said the government had no intention of scrapping the Northern Ireland protocol, but that the UK did require “significant changes”, which he said were necessary to protect the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market.

In a statement bound to raise hackles in Brussels, Ellis repeated Truss’s claim that the Commission’s proposed changes to the protocol “would take us backwards”. He criticised the “narrow mandate” Sefčovič had been given by the EU’s 27 member states, saying: “The EU have confirmed that they will never change their mandate and because of that the situation is now very serious.”

Ellis also accused the EU of politicising the UK’s membership of the Horizon research programme. While Kosovo and Israel had associated themselves with the €95.5 bn (£81.3bn) EU research programme, the UK remained outside. He said:

The exchanges made for a testy start for the inaugural meeting of the ‘EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly”, a group of MPs, Lords and MEPs that will hold regular meetings to boost cooperation.

Ahead of the meeting, Nathalie Loiseau, a French centrist MEP and former Europe minister, who is co-chairing the group, warned the UK against reneging on the protocol. She said:



The British co-chair, Conservative MP Sir Oliver Heald said there was a “particular situation in Northern Ireland” and “both sides needed to go that “extra, extra mile”.

Source: The Guardian

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