The British government would put Northern Ireland in a “very dangerous place” by unilaterally changing the region’s post-Brexit trade protocol, Sinn Féin Vice President Michelle O’Neill said on Tuesday.
O’Neill came as UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was set to announce plans to introduce new legislation to override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol if the UK and EU cannot agree on changes to the existing agreement in the coming weeks.
Northern Ireland would be “caught in the middle of a game of chicken”, O’Neill said, due to the threat of EU retaliation against a unilateral British decision.
“Essentially what you can attribute it to is that they intend to go down this route of legislating to override an international agreement – that’s not the way to do business,” he said. O’Neill told Irish radio RTÉ. Such a decision only “reinforces political instability”, she added.
The protocol, which has always been the thorniest part of the Brexit deal, keeps Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods while imposing EU customs checks on British goods on arrival at ports in Northern Ireland.
“There are ways to make it easier to implement the protocol. This is the way forward, not unilateral action,” O’Neill added.
If the UK’s proposed changes to the protocol are drastic enough, it could risk a trade war with the EU. Irish EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness mentioned On Tuesday, there “should be a strong reaction” if the UK did not treat the EU “as equals” in its approach to the protocol.
O’Neill’s Sinn Féin won a historic victory earlier this month in the Northern Ireland general election, which marked the first time a nationalist party won the most seats in the assembly from Northern Ireland. Following the election, a majority of Assembly lawmakers now favor keeping the protocol.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has strongly criticized the operation of the protocol and has so far blocked the formation of a government in Northern Ireland. The DUP, as the largest pro-British party in Northern Ireland, has a veto over the establishment of a new power-sharing administration, under the terms of the 1998 peace accord .
politico Gt