Brexit: a very important agreement has been reached

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The interdenominational Belfast municipality formed by the anti-British Catholic and Protestant parties loyal to the crown has not been functioning since February 2022. The primary reason for this is that the radical EU-skeptic DUP did not accept the Northern Ireland clause of the agreement setting the conditions for the termination of British EU membership (Brexit). The purpose of this clause is to prevent uncontrolled products, especially food and medicine from the territory of Northern Ireland, from entering the Republic of Ireland – that is, the single internal market of the European Union.

To this end, trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland should be subject to case-by-case controls, but the DUP’s view is that this solution challenges Northern Ireland’s constitutional position within the United Kingdom by raising a customs border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is not part of Great Britain, which is made up of England, Scotland and Wales, but together with it forms the United Kingdom under the authority of the British Crown.

The 80-page draft solution published by the British government on Wednesday – which was also approved by the UK-EU joint committee that monitors compliance with Brexit rules – deals with the creation of the UK’s internal market guarantee system.

The guarantee system practically automatically classifies more than 80 percent of the goods traffic between Great Britain and Northern Ireland into the product category in which there is no risk that the goods belonging to this category will be transferred to the single internal market of the EU. This part of the trade will therefore officially remain within the UK’s internal market system and no longer need to be subject to control.

The deal announced on Wednesday will give products from Northern Ireland unhindered access to all other UK markets.

Since Brexit, the 499-kilometer border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has been the only land customs border between the United Kingdom and the European Union. As one of the main achievements of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which started the settlement of the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, this border, which was once strictly guarded by the military, has not been controlled for a long time, and in order to keep this border open, special regulation of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is necessary.

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