The Northern Irish Minister of Agriculture ordered his services to end post-Brexit controls on agrifood at midnight on Wednesday, February 2. The legality of this instruction obviously raises questions, as the Brexit agreements had led to the introduction of these checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain, within the United Kingdom itself.
Designed to prevent the re-establishment of a physical border with neighboring Ireland which would risk weakening the peace concluded in 1998, the Northern Irish protocol keeps the British province in the European single market and customs union. But the Northern Irish Unionists, including Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots, of the ultra-conservative DUP party, believe that these controls constitute a border in the Irish Sea, and that they threaten the place of the British province within the UK.
Edwin Poots (DUP) therefore ordered the head of his administration to stop agri-food controls in the ports of the British province. It is unclear whether or not this instruction will be followed, with some within the DUP itself arguing that the administration is under a legal obligation to carry them out. Edwin Poots, for his part, assured that he had taken “legal advice” in this regard and argues that controls require local executive approval which is lacking.
Northern Irish Deputy Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill, of the left-wing republican party Sinn Fein, denounced on Twitter a maneuver on the part of the DUP of“unlawfully interfere with national and international law”. This announcement comes three months before crucial elections in May, where Sinn Fein, in favor of a referendum within five years on the reunification of the island, is given the lead in the polls. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney denounced a “violation of international law”. “It’s playing politics with legal obligations”he told senators in Dublin.
This stunt is an attempt by the DUP to unlawfully interfere with domestic, and international law. DUP fixed on their own priorities, which are clearly at odds with where the wider community is at. Health, Jobs, Housing, Cost of living crisis is where the rest of us are focused
— Michelle O’Neill (@moneillsf) February 2, 2022
The controversial Northern Irish protocol is currently the subject of intense negotiations. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is due to speak in a call with European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic on Thursday. Under pressure from unionists who have demanded progress by February 21, the date of the next meeting of the United Kingdom EU joint committee on the implementation of the Brexit agreement, the head of British diplomacy posted last week during a trip to Northern Ireland to quickly make “significant progress”.