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In a Saturday edition of The Daily Telegraph, Johnson said the EU’s position justified the new law proposed by his administration to rewrite the Brexito treaty, a bill that worries even his own MPs.
Negotiations between London and Brussels on future trade relations are stalled. Under threat of an agreement not being reached until later this year, when Brexit enters into full force, the European Union is, according to Johnson, prone to “extreme interpretation of the rules on Northern Ireland.”
“We are told that the EU will not only impose tariffs on products moving from Britain to Northern Ireland, but may actually stop Britain’s food shipments to Northern Ireland,” the prime minister wrote.
“I have to say that we never seriously thought that the EU could be determined to use a fairly negotiated treaty to block, isolate or isolate a part of the UK, or that they would actually threaten to destroy the UK’s economic and territorial integrity,” Johnson added.
The food dispute has to do mainly with the EU’s refusal to grant Britain “third country” status, recognizing that countries meet the basic requirements for food exports to the EU.
Under Britain’s EU accession treaty, Northern Ireland will have a special status to ensure that its “hard” border with EU member Ireland is not returned. The absence of such a border is foreseen in the 1998 peace treaty, which ended three decades of bloodshed.
The EU is concerned that, after Brexit, Britain could lower food standards, as well as rules on state aid for businesses and send goods to the single market via Northern Ireland.
Following another difficult round of trade talks in London this week, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said there was “a lot of uncertainty” about Britain’s food export regime after January 1.
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“The EU needs more clarity so that the bloc can assess the UK’s inclusion in the list of third countries,” Barnier said in a statement.
According to Johnson, his government remains committed to reaching an agreement with the EU before the end of the year.
“However, we cannot leave the theoretical possibility of dividing our country – dividing it – in the hands of an international organization,” he wrote, calling the UK’s new internal market law a “legal safety net.”
The prime minister’s article was published after he held a chaotic video conference on Friday night with outraged Conservative MPs overwhelmed by the prospect of terminating the international treaty.
“We must pass this law,” Johnson wrote before Monday’s parliamentary debate. “Therefore, I warn my fellow parliamentarians that we cannot go back to the dark days of last year, a struggle that has hurt our negotiators in this way.”
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