The European Union needs to stop making “threats” and work out a new way to deal with “big” countries like Britain, David Frost has said.
Speaking at a committee hearing in Westminster on Tuesday the UK’s Brexit minister said the post-membership relationship with the bloc had been more difficult than expected and would be “a little bumpy” for some time.
He claimed Brussels was not showing “a huge amount of engagement” with the UK’s concerns about the Northern Ireland Brexit deal and said the protocol was threatening the “delicate balance” of the Good Friday Agreement.
Lord Frost, who revealed that he was planning to to write a book about his dealings with the EU, offered the 27-country union advice on dealing with other countries like Britain.
“I think the EU does need to try and find a way of dealing with big third countries in its neighbourhood that is a bit more responsive, and sort of fleet-of-foot rather than a cookie-cutter approach and fitting everything into a template,” he said.
Turning to the Commission’s treatment of the UK, he added: “If it had one criticism, perhaps it is that sometimes it feels like the resort to threats is a bit quick and you know, we don’t make threats in quite the same way as I think some players in the EU do, and I think if we could just sort of dial that down a bit it would help.”
Lord Frost has admitted that the protocol he negotiated to deal with the Northern Ireland border issue was more damaging to trade between Great Britain and the province that he had expected.
The new arrangement, which puts checks on the Irish Sea, is causing frictions on trade and has angered both unionists and businesses, some of whom have given up shipping to Northern Ireland due to the new bureaucracy.
The situation is expected to worsen when grace periods, negotiated in December last year, come to an end – with one crucial one covering chilled meats like sausages set to finish this month.
But Britain has taken to unilaterally extending the periods without the EU’s agreement, a move that has angered Brussels, who see it as backsliding on the recently signed agreement.
The EU says Britain should implement the agreement it negotiated and has threatened to use agreed sanctions – including potential trade tariffs – if Britain stays in breach.
But Lord Frost told MPs: “If those arrangements are going to be sustainable, they have to operate in a pragmatic and proportionate way – and that’s not what’s happening.
“The delicate balance in the Good Friday Agreement risks being unsettled. We are implementing the protocol as best we can and spending a lot of money on it, but there are still still big problems, and this is creating a sense of difficulty for identity in Northern Ireland.”
Lord Frost added that the current situation was “not satisfactory and it’s hard to see how it can be sustained” because of the need for it to be approved by the Northern Ireland assembly.
Turning to the wider relationship with the EU, which has been characterised by growing incomprehension and mistrust on both sides, he added: “There’s been a big change in the relationship, and lots of things have changed very rapidly and everybody is kind of adjusting to that… I think we’ve just got to let that play out, to some extent and and sort of manage it as responsible international actors should/
“I think it’s reasonable to think it will be, you know, a little bumpy for some time being because of that. I said last week as a speech to another event that I think we… those who campaigned for Leave would have been surprised to think that the relationship was, as relatively difficult as it is now.
“You know it’s not something that we want. We do things the sooner we can move beyond the settling down process, the better. But we probably have to let it work through.”
