Slowly but surely they are coming to an agreement. That is the message from the Irish Prime Minister on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Speaking in Galway, Leo Varadkar said that the intensive talks between Dublin, Belfast, London and Brussels were going well; but that it was still necessary for all parties to reach an agreement:
“I think that the talks on the reform of the protocol are moving towards a conclusion. It is true that the agreement is not yet closed, but I think that we are close to a conclusion. And I want to thank the governments of the United Kingdom, the European Commission and to the parties in Northern Ireland for the level of commitment they have made in recent months to get to this point. I would like to encourage everyone to go the extra mile to reach an agreement, because the benefits are huge.”
Talks held in mid-February between the Northern Irish parties and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appear to have ended positively. Both the nationalist and unionist parties left the meetings apparently satisfied.
If all goes well, an agreement on Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trade regime could be reached this week.
Sunak wants to carry out the agreement this Sunday
In the United Kingdom, the deputies of the ruling Conservative Party have been ordered to be present at Monday’s session of the House of Commons (Lower), presumably to endorse the pact that London and Brussels finalize to settle their post-Brexit relationship.
According to the newspaper “The Times”, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, intends to carry out the agreement this Sunday, despite facing a priori the rejection of the Europhobic wing of his party headed by the former head of Government Boris Johnson.
The protocol, designed to avoid a physical border between the two Irelands, keeps Northern Ireland within the Community and British internal market, so trade controls between the United Kingdom and the EU are carried out at entry points Northern Irish, which entails a new bureaucracy that affects trade.
This commercial border located in the Irish Sea is also a political barrier for the unionist community, which maintains that it jeopardizes the relationship of the province with the rest of the United Kingdom.
Source: Euronews Español
