EU, UK Reach Post-Brexit Northern Ireland Deal
The EU and the U.K. reached an agreement this week on post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, potentially ending a dispute that has hung over both sides since the U.K. left the bloc in 2020 (see 2211090023). The Windsor Framework deal, which covers new “arrangements” on customs rules and trade, will allow for the “free-flowing movement of goods” between Northern Ireland and Britain and “removes any sense of a border in the Irish Sea within the U.K.,” the U.K. said in a Feb 27 news release. The deal avoids a hard border between the U.K. and Ireland, an EU member, which could have complicated a range of trade issues.
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The deal will create a new U.K. “green lane” to allow traders moving goods to Northern Ireland to be “freed of unnecessary paperwork, checks and duties,” and goods shipped to Northern Ireland will no longer require export declarations, the U.K. said. The EU said the agreement also will include “robust safeguards to ensure the integrity of the EU's Single Market, to which Northern Ireland has a unique access.”
New customs procedures will allow goods moved by “trusted traders” and not at risk of entering the EU market to benefit “dramatically” from “drastically simplified declarations with reduced data requirements,” the European Commission said. Substantial facilitations were found for freight and the movement of all types of parcels. The two sides agreed to safeguards, including “robust authorization and monitoring of the trusted trader scheme” and increased market surveillance and enforcement by the U.K. “Full customs procedures will apply to goods at risk of entering the EU's Single Market.”
The U.K. said the deal “protects Northern Ireland’s” place in the EU, including by allowing the Northern Ireland Assembly to oppose new EU goods rules that “would have significant and lasting effects on everyday lives in Northern Ireland.” It also said “over 1,700 of EU law have been removed,” and “the minimal set of EU rules -- less than 3% -- apply to preserve the privileged, unrestricted access for Northern Ireland businesses to the whole of the EU Single Market and avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.”
The deal will take effect in phases to give “businesses and individuals time to prepare,” the U.K. said. Some of the new arrangements for goods, agricultural products, pets and plants will be introduced later this year, and the rest will be introduced in 2024. “In the meantime, the current temporary standstill arrangements will continue to apply.”
The commission and the U.K. still will need to take steps to translate the deal into “legally binding instruments” and implement those provisions, the EU said. The EU-U.K. Joint Committee on the Withdrawal Agreement will discuss details in a meeting in the “coming weeks.”