The end of the political blockage which has lasted for two years seems in sight in Northern Ireland, where the main unionist party, which boycotted local institutions, reached an agreement with London on post-Brexit rules.
If it succeeds, this compromise – the content of which remains unknown – would mark the end of a crisis which has profoundly affected the public services of the province and exceeded the population. It would lead to the arrival at the head of local government of a figure from a party favorable to the reunification of Ireland, a historic turning point in the British province with a bloody past.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) withdrew in February 2022 from the Northern Irish executive and parliament, Stormont, to protest against the new specific trade rules introduced between Brussels and London, which according to it threatened the place of the province. within the United Kingdom.
After months of negotiations and following an internal vote, party leader Jeffrey Donaldson announced on the night of Monday to Tuesday that the DUP was ready to “move forward” and participate in the restart from Stormont.
To achieve this result, the British government put on the table measures intended to respond to the fears of unionists.
Their details will not be revealed until Wednesday, after consultations with the province’s other political parties, but they contain “measures which are good for Northern Ireland and which will restore our place within the United Kingdom and its market interior,” defended Jeffrey Donaldson.
“I really hope that this agreement will accomplish what it is supposed to accomplish and history will tell,” defended the British minister in charge of Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris.
” A lot of work “
The absence of Parliament and a local executive, competent on many subjects such as education or health, seriously disrupts public services in the province, a situation aggravated by the cost of living crisis.
At the beginning of January, tens of thousands of civil servants went on strike to demand better pay.
London has already promised an envelope of 3.3 billion pounds (5.5 billion Canadian dollars) in favor of the province once the assembly is reformed.
Once the agreement is adopted in the British Parliament, the Northern Irish local assembly will have to meet to elect a president, and appoint the prime minister of the future local government.
It should be Michelle O’Neill, vice-president of Sinn Fein, big winner of the last local elections, a first in the province.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” she said Tuesday during a press briefing.
“We can’t wait now to move things forward, to put the ministers in place, to bring the MPs back to the assembly, and of course for Michelle O’Neill to become Prime Minister,” also rejoiced the leader of Sinn Fein, Mary Lou McDonald, from Dublin.
The DUP was particularly opposed to the agreement concluded last year between London and Brussels – called the “Windsor Framework” – which defined rules to avoid a border separating the province and the Republic of Ireland, as provide for the peace agreements that put an end to thirty years of violence on the island.
For some unionists, this framework does not sufficiently protect the province’s place within the United Kingdom, with European rules continuing to apply in Northern Ireland.
According to Chris Heaton-Harris, the agreement reached on Tuesday will not require renegotiation with Brussels.
A spokesperson for the European Commission, however, affirmed that the institution is “monitoring the situation closely” and “will examine this text”.
For his part, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who is due to meet with his counterpart Rishi Sunak, welcomed the DUP’s decision while saying he wanted to “ensure that it does not have negative consequences” on the ” Windsor Framework” or the 1998 peace agreement.
Northern Irish employers were also delighted, judging that the blocking of institutions “has undoubtedly slowed down the local economy”.
The leader of the Northern Irish Alliance party, the third political form in the province, Naomi Long, regretted two “wasted” years and called for institutional reform to avoid “another collapse” of the government in the future.