Lord Frost has accused the EU of acting “without regard to the huge political, economic and identity sensitivities” in Northern Ireland, in a further escalation of tensions with Brussels.
The Brexit minister claimed the bloc had “destroyed cross-community consent” with a strict enforcement of the Northern Ireland Protocol – a key part of the Brexit agreement he negotiated and that Boris Johnson signed in 2019.
Lord Frost’s remarks – in the foreword to a Policy Exchange paper – came as talks between London and Brussels over the protocol broke up without a breakthrough on Friday, with the UK government insisting differences remained “significant”.
“We must return to the protocol and deliver a more robust, a more balanced, outcome than we could in 2019,” Lord Frost insisted, as he argued it had “begun to damage” the Good Friday Agreement.
The UK has already threatened to suspend the Northern Ireland Protocol as early as mid-November, in a move that would almost inevitably trigger retaliatory measures.
The terms of the protocol effectively kept Northern Ireland in the single market, creating a trading border down the Irish Sea between Great Britain – angering unionists and hitting the UK’s internal market.
Earlier this month, Brussels proposed significant relaxations, offering to scrap 80 per cent of checks on goods entering Northern Ireland while Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice president, called on the UK to engage “earnestly and intensively”.
But the European Commission has also told EU member states that the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was “not up for discussion” – a key demand of the UK government.
In his article, Lord Frost said: “It [the protocol] has begun to damage the thing it was designed to protect – the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.
“The insistence of the EU on treating these arrangements as like any other part of its customs and single market rules, without regard to the huge political, economic, and identity sensitivities involved, has destroyed cross-community consent well before the four-year mark.
“We also have the lived experience of aspects that are simply unsustainable in the long-term for any government responsible for the lives of its citizens – like having to negotiate with a third party about the distribution of medicines within the NHS.
“That is why we must return to the protocol and deliver a more robust, and more balanced outcome than we could in 2019. I hope the EU will in the end join us in that.”
The bloc has previously stressed, however, that the package of measures outlined earlier in October was aimed at “solving practical problems” affecting businesses while preserving peace provided by the Good Friday Agreement.
The Policy Exchange paper – The Northern Ireland Protocol: The Origins of the Current Crisis, by Roderick Crawford – provides a chronology of Brexit negotiations and what went wrong in 2017.
Lord Frost also uses the piece to claim that the 2017 EU-UK joint report – setting the terms of the Brexit process – was a result of the “extreme weakness” of Theresa May’s government after her ill-fated election gamble in June 2017.
