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The EU and the UK have behaved like an “absent owner” in relation to Northern Ireland, a Brexit expert in the region has said, as a new report from the Institute of Government warned of more conflict on all issues “if the UK does not manage the relationship ”with Brussels.
Under the Brexit trade deal, more than 20 committees and bodies are supposed to be established to cement a post-Brexit working relationship on everything from fisheries to energy supply to aviation agreements.
After the signing of the Northern Ireland protocol a year ago, a dozen more are expected to be created, and it is the failure to create these management structures that is seen as the cause of the increased tensions in the region. which led to the withdrawal of Brexit staff at ports last week.
“If the UK does not manage the relationship well, it may end up having more conflict with the EU than if it had spent more time thinking about it beforehand.
“The protocol is not an easy thing to start with a click of the fingers. But there has been this sense of an absent owner with all these rules coming into play and no means of direct involvement to help manage the consequences, “said Katy Hayward, professor of sociology at Queen’s University in Belfast and former adviser to the now-defunct department. Brexit policy.
“The main concern of the European Commission has been to demonstrate and demonstrate to other member states that the single market is being protected,” he said, adding that such a one-dimensional approach was not suitable for Northern Ireland, a region that is still launched through a post-conflict peace process that the EU itself had brought to the fore in the negotiations.
The Institute of Government report on managing the UK’s relationship with the EU makes a similar point about the broader Brexit relationship, saying that management structures must be urgently put in place.
Bronwen Maddox, the thinktank’s director, described it in a podcast on Saturday as “missing the hidden wiring.”
The institute says the committees will serve as platforms for expert and on-the-ground reporting that will act, in the case of Northern Ireland, as an early warning system to prevent problems before they arise.
Their report says that “the government seems inclined at all times to downplay the importance of the UK’s relationship with the EU, and to have a preference for dealing bilaterally with individual member states rather than with the EU institutions.
“You may also fear that creating a bureaucracy that is too elaborate to manage relations with the EU will produce a mindset in which the EU has more important internal thinking than it needs.
“The government wanted a Canada-style deal with the EU, but … Brussels will never see the UK simply as Toronto on Thames, and if the UK doesn’t manage the relationship well, it may end up with more conflicts with the EU than if he had spent more time thinking about the problem beforehand. “
Under the Northern Ireland protocol, an advisory working group was supposed to have been set up to feed into the joint UK-EU committee that oversees the implementation of Brexit.
But although the protocol was signed over a year ago, it was never established, leading to rigorous enforcement of it that has led to restrictions on food, pets, and plants, all of which have been seized upon by loyal communities and others as evidence. separation from Great Britain.
But Hayward says there are solutions for Michael Gove and European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič, who will meet next week, with part of the protocol explicitly allowing for a relaxation of controls at ports.
Article 6.2 of the protocol states that the committee will consider the “integral place of Northern Ireland in the internal market of the United Kingdom” and will do “everything possible to facilitate trade between Northern Ireland and other parts of the United Kingdom”.
It adds that the ease of trade between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom will be kept under constant review and the committee may at any time make “appropriate recommendations in order to avoid controls at Northern Ireland ports and airports as far as possible. possible”. .
Hayward said: “The hope would be that those EU observers could recognize the nature of the situation and could see where there could be flexibility and pragmatism.”
• The title and text of this article were modified on Sunday, February 7 to better reflect the comments of Professor Katy Hayward.
