UK unveils law unilaterally changing post-Brexit rules

The United Kingdom government on Monday proposed new legislation that would unilaterally change post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, despite opposition from some UK lawmakers and European Union officials, who say the move violates international law.

The proposed bill seeks to remove customs checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. That will override parts of the trade treaty that Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed with the European Union less than two years ago.

Britain’s government maintains it is acting within international law, but the EU has threatened to retaliate, raising the possibility of a trade war between the two sides.

On Monday, Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said the bill “marks a particular low point in the UK’s approach to Brexit”. Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said it was “very regrettable for a country like the UK to renege on an international treaty”.

Brushing aside criticism, Johnson told reporters that the proposed change is “relatively simple to do”.

“Frankly, it’s a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things,” he told LBC Radio.

He argued that his government’s “higher and prior legal commitment” is to the 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement and to preserve stability in Northern Ireland.

Arrangements for Northern Ireland — the only part of the UK that shares a land border with an EU nation — have proved the thorniest issue in Britain’s divorce from the bloc, which became final at the end of 2020.

At the centre of disputes is the Northern Ireland Protocol, which seeks to maintain peace between Northern Ireland, a part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, part of the EU, after Brexit.

Britain and the EU agreed as part of their Brexit deal that the Irish land border would be kept free of customs posts and other checks, because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Instead, to protect the EU’s single market, there are checks on some goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

But the arrangement has proved politically damaging for Johnson because it treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the United Kingdom, potentially weakening the province’s historic links with Britain. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party has refused to return to the region’s power-sharing government until the protocol is scrapped or substantially changed to address those concerns.

The bill to override that arrangement is expected to face opposition in Parliament, including from members of Johnson’s Conservatives. Critics say unilaterally changing the protocol would be illegal and would damage Britain’s standing with other countries, because it’s part of a treaty considered binding under international law.

European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic said on Monday that “unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust, and a formula for uncertainty”.

AP