[ad_1]
After days of threats and accusations, the United Kingdom and the European Union will try to rescue a plan to calm the tensions in Northern Ireland after Brexit on Wednesday.
Lord David Frost, Minister of Brexit, and Marros Sevkovic, Vice President of the European Commission, will officially meet to try to resolve the issue of the trade border between Britain and Northern Ireland after Brexit.
Before the meeting, British officials claimed that Brussels was trying to “use” coming soon US President Joe Biden put pressure on Frost in the UK to ask him to make concessions in the Northern Ireland agreement negotiations.
Frost said on Tuesday that there was “a short period of time” for the new arrangements to work. The agreement is part of the 2019 Brexit withdrawal treaty between the United Kingdom and Brussels, which aims to avoid a hard border in Ireland through new inspections of trade across the Irish Sea.
Biden will arrive in the UK on Thursday Cornwall G7 Summit And will hold talks with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The White House has confirmed that Biden will raise the issue of Northern Ireland at the meeting.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula Vonderlein discussed the differences on the Northern Ireland issue during a conference call on Wednesday, and they agreed to hold further talks on the sidelines of the G7 meeting. Von der Lein issued a warning after she expressed “deep concern” about the state of Britain’s efforts to implement the agreement reached with the European Union.
Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin called on the two sides on Tuesday to “depoliticize” the agreement and see the differences as a technical trade issue that needs to be overcome.
“The important thing is that we did solve these problems and built trust between the EU and the UK,” he said. “Otherwise we will face ongoing problems and problems.”
As far as Brussels is concerned, EU diplomats were warned in a closed-door meeting on Monday that the UK may ease the differences this week and then take more active actions after the G7 and US meetings.
A diplomat told the Financial Times that the expressed concern was that Britain might “go all out” on the Northern Ireland issue, including possible “unilateral measures” to downplay the agreement.
Frost earlier this week defendant The EU’s “legal purism” requires the application of the protocol. The European Union stated that the UK has failed to implement the basic parts of the new arrangement, such as establishing and appropriately equipping cargo with border control points and sharing data with Brussels.
Johnson’s allies believe that Brussels is trying to blame Frost, the former chief negotiator of the United Kingdom, for the bad atmosphere of the negotiations.
“They are playing people instead of the ball, but it doesn’t work,” a senior British official said. “When you compare him to the prime minister, David is actually quite gentle. Boris has taken a very tough attitude towards all this.”
But behind-the-scenes work has been stepping up the search for what Frost called a “practical solution” to soften trade border controls from the UK to Northern Ireland. The minister is scheduled to have dinner with Sefcovic in London on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the two will co-chair the first meeting of the NEPAD Committee-designed to monitor the EU-UK trade agreement-and hold a separate meeting to review the operation of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
EU has Emphasize It is stepping up its efforts to find a solution to the stimulus caused by the agreement-on Monday it distributed documents to EU diplomats on issues including used car value-added tax, steel import charges, UK-made drug import barriers and veterinary inspections.
The United Kingdom submitted a proposal for a veterinary agreement to Brussels last week to ease some of the inspections on goods entering Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom after Brexit-although the EU and the United Kingdom are still very divided on how this arrangement works.
“The first of these challenges is the destructive impact of the agreement on the local area of ??Northern Ireland,” Frost said, claiming that the new border inspection disrupted the trade of frozen meat and medicines across the Irish Sea.
Sevcovic prompt Frost said that if the United Kingdom does not comply with the agreement, the EU may impose tariffs on British exports in retaliation. “Further threats to take legal action and trade retaliation” are useless.
With the Northern Ireland trade rules, the two sides will also discuss Recent clashes over fishing rights in Jersey, And the UK will push for confirmation of its participation in certain EU programs, such as Horizon European Science and Research Funding.
[ad_2]
Source link
