By Guy Faulconbridge and Elizabeth Piper
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain on Monday called for a reinitiation in relations with the European Union and a refinement of a Brexit deal covering trade with Northern Ireland, saying that confidence waned when Brussels tried to restrict trade. supply of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Relations between Brussels and London strained by years of hard-hitting Brexit negotiations worsened last month, when the EU threatened to use emergency measures to prevent coronavirus vaccines from being bloc to Northern Ireland.
To avoid creating a hard border on the island of Ireland, Northern Ireland remained within the EU’s single market for products under the Brexit agreement, effectively creating a border within the United Kingdom.
The EU quickly changed its position on vaccines, but London hopes to capitalize on the gaffe to win changes to the Brexit deal because the new rules have caused disruptions in Britain’s trade with Northern Ireland.
“It was a time when trust was eroded, when damage was done and where movement is needed to ensure that we have an appropriate reset,” Michael Gove, who is in charge of implementing the divorce settlement, told a parliamentary committee. .
Reaching the heart of the EU project, Gove scolded the bloc for placing its members above the people of Northern Ireland, raising the prospect of border control of vaccines – something that Brussels has long said it wanted to avoid.
“If people put a particular type of integrationist theology before the interests of the people of Northern Ireland, they are not serving the cause of peace and progress in Northern Ireland, and that is my main concern,” he said.
“Pandora’s Box has been opened and that is worrying … who knows which Trojan horses will come out,” said Gove, quoting the words of former Foreign Affairs Secretary Ernest Bevin about the idea of joining an EU precursor .
GRACE PERIOD
The EU’s rapid turnaround encouraged British ministers, and last week Gove sent a letter to European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic demanding some changes to the so-called Northern Ireland protocol to the Brexit agreement.
He demanded that the grace periods for transporting food from Great Britain to Northern Ireland be extended from a few months to two years.
“There are a number of issues … where we believe we need to refine the way the protocol operates so that it is effective in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland,” Gove told lawmakers.
The EU is on the verge of rejecting Britain’s requests for a two-year extension of the grace periods for post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland, reported the Telegraph https://bit.ly/3cR0QvZ Monday night fair, citing British government sources.
The European Commission, the EU executive, is expected to agree to an extension of just three to six months of existing agreements for traders transporting goods between Britain and the province, the report added.
Some politicians in Northern Ireland have called for the protocol to be canceled, saying it caused shortages in supermarkets and prevented the delivery of other products.
The European Commission declined to comment directly on Gove’s comments, but a spokeswoman said the deal with Brexit last December would not be reopened.
“Our focus remains on the implementation of the Protocol and the decisions adopted by the Joint Committee on the Withdrawal Agreement at the end of last year,” she said.
The EU and Britain have agreed to work hard to resolve the difficulties and Gove is due to meet Sefcovic on Thursday to try to find a way forward.
Politicians have been struggling to avoid a harsh border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, fearing it could be detrimental to the 1998 peace agreement, which ended three decades of conflict in the province.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in London with additional reporting by Robin Emmott in Brussels; Written by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by David Clarke, Janet Lawrence and Alex Richardson)