Northern Ireland Agreement 2020

In the officially negotiated Withdrawal Agreement, the “Irish backstop” was removed and replaced by this new protocol. The whole of the UK would leave the EU customs union as a single customs territory, with Northern Ireland included in future UK trade agreements, but northern Ireland would adopt EU single market rules on goods, thus remaining a point of entry into the EU customs union. [23] This would prevent a “hard border” on the island of Ireland. Article 2 of the Protocol contains certain guarantees for human rights and equality measures, and specific EU measures against discrimination are listed in Annex 1. The Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland was conceived as a stable and sustainable solution and will apply in parallel with any future Partnership Agreement. With the official exit of Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK from the EU, that has changed. During the Brexit negotiations, representatives of the EU, Ireland and the UK tried to avoid the return of a hard border, fearing that checkpoints would make trade more difficult, revive tensions between communities and open the door to further violence. But London`s obligation to leave the single market and the EU`s customs union has made some sort of border control inevitable. The new relationship between the EU and the UK, negotiated in 2020 and implemented from January 2021, has agreed on a complicated solution to this delicate issue: the Northern Ireland Protocol. This is because the Good Friday Agreement reached complicated agreements between the different parties.

The three strands of the pact created a network of institutions to govern Northern Ireland (Orientation One), to bring together the leaders of Northern Ireland with those of Ireland (Strand Two or North-South Cooperation), and to bring together leaders from across the United Kingdom and Ireland (Strand Three or East-West Cooperation). There are currently more than 140 areas of cross-border cooperation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, including health services, energy infrastructure and policing. Many experts and political leaders fear that any interruption in this cooperation will undermine confidence in the agreement and thus in the foundations of peace in Northern Ireland. These issues – parades, flags and legacy of the past – were negotiated in 2013, chaired by Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Meghan L. O`Sullivan, professor at Harvard Kennedy School and now a member of the CFR Board of Trustees. The talks, which involved the five main political parties, failed to reach an agreement, although many of the proposals – including the creation of a historic investigation unit to investigate unresolved deaths during the conflict and a commission to help victims obtain information about the deaths of their loved ones – were a large part of the Stormont House deal. which was achieved in 2014. Article 4 reaffirms that Northern Ireland is and will remain an integral part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland is therefore part of a future UK trade deal, and nothing in the protocol prevents an agreement that allows Northern Ireland`s exports on the same basis as Britain`s. The Withdrawal Agreement entered into force on 1 February 2020, after being approved on 17 October 2019. It consists, inter alia, of a protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Those documents shall describe the draft decisions of the Joint Committee and the draft unilateral declarations of the United Kingdom and the EU within the Joint Committee, of which this Agreement consists essentially. The trade unionist response to the protocol has always been negative. In October 2020, the de facto border between Britain and Northern Ireland was criticised by Lord Empey, chief negotiator for the Ulster Unionist Party at the Good Friday Agreement and former Stormont minister. He described a border on the Irish Sea as “the most significant change that has taken place since partition”[31] and that “Northern Ireland`s centre of gravity could gradually shift towards Dublin/Brussels. This cannot remain without constitutional consequences. [32] In February 2021, (then) DUP leader Arlene Foster opposed her “implicit red line along the Irish Sea,” contrary to Prime Minister Johnson`s assurances. [33] According to the UK`s Implementation Plan (July 2020), a control system for goods transferred from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will require three types of electronic documents, as outlined in an eleven-page document. [62] In an important compromise, the parties agreed on measures to promote the Irish language, which unionists have long opposed, fearing that they would elevate nationalist and republican culture to the detriment of their own. In return, the agreement contained provisions to promote the Scots of Ulster, which is traditionally spoken of the descendants of Protestants who came from Scotland to Northern Ireland. .

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