No need to carry out border checks on food in Northern Ireland supermarkets, Foster tells the EU | Politics

Arlene Foster, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, has written to the EU to ask it to think twice before risking the daily food supply to local supermarkets with mandatory Brexit health checks from January 1.

J Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer have warned that certain lines of meat, fish and dairy products may be restricted due to controls that will be imposed on food and animals entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain from 1 January.

The DUP leader and Deputy Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill said they have “urgently called on the EU to consider the serious implications and impact on our food and commodity supply chains.”

They argue that “it is simply not credible” to impose sanitary controls in ports on “goods [that] they are pounds sterling packed by well established companies ”, which pose“ zero risk of back door use ”in Ireland and therefore the single market.

In a recent memo on the status of Brexit talks, EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier warned that he doesn’t want a “food scandal there in a few years,” suggesting that the EU has not yet agreed to give up. the controls of the supermarkets. suppliers.

The EU is concerned about the possibility of infections or outbreaks of diseases such as salmonella crossing the invisible border with the Republic of Ireland if it does not carry out rigorous controls at Northern Ireland ports and airports.

The exact nature of these controls is still being discussed in the joint EU-UK committee tasked with implementing Brexit and chaired by Michael Gove and Maroš Šefčovič, the vice-president of the European Commission.

The confidential update on the talks suggests that Gove and Šefčovič have yet to agree on the frequency of checks and the requirement that all products arriving from Britain have a health certificate.

Last week, Sainsbury CEO Simon Roberts said the trade needed something like “trusted merchant status” to help the free flow of goods. “Customers expect to have access to a full range, but [it] It won’t be possible for it to be available unless something changes. “

In a statement, Foster said: “It is simply not credible or in good faith what the EU committed to in NI to maintain a position that well established supermarket chains such as Iceland, M&S, Tesco or Sainsbury’s cannot be trusted to ship products to NI for circulation to NI.

“It is simply not reasonable for the EU to insist that these products be treated as ‘at risk’, putting food and product supplies at risk for NI on January 1st.”

EU representatives said they had received the letter from Foster and O’Neill and were aware of the problems supermarkets are facing.

The health check rules “are there to protect the health and safety of consumers in the single market, including consumers in Northern Ireland. We are, of course, aware of the concerns raised regarding supermarkets and the importation of food products in Northern Ireland ”.