Brexit: EU ambassador hits out at Truss for ‘unhelpful’ comments on NI Protocol
A war of words between the UK and EU over the post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol has reignited just days before negotiations are set to resume.
The EU’s ambassador to the UK Joao Vale de Almeida today said renewed threats by foreign secretary Liz Truss to trigger Article 16 and suspend the protocol were “unsurprising” and that she should not “keep agitating the issue”.
Truss wrote in The Sunday Telegraph that Article 16 is a necessary “safeguard clause” that was “explicitly designed … to ease acute problems because of the sensitivity of the issues at play”, such as economic and political disruption, on the island of Ireland.
She said she was willing to use the clause and would not “sign up to anything which sees the people of Northern Ireland unable to benefit from the same decisions on taxation and spending as the rest of the UK”.
The UK threatened to suspend the protocol for much of last year in the face of economic problems caused by stringent EU border checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
London and Brussels have both produced proposals to reduce checks, however the two sides have still not been able to come to an agreement with talks set to resume between Truss and her EU counterpart Maros Sefcovic on Thursday.
Speaking to Sky News today, Almeida said: “We still believe it’s not very helpful that we keep agitating the issue of Article 16. I think what we should focus on – at least that’s where we are focused on – is trying to find solutions for difficulties in the implementation of the protocol.”
Truss was given the job of lead negotiator on Northern Ireland, after Lord David Frost quit his post as defacto Brexit secretary last month.
The foreign secretary has said she will retain all the negotiating proposals of Frost, including a call to remove the European Courts of Justice as the final legal overseer of the treaty.