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N.Ireland first minister quits over post-Brexit trade rules

Europe Materials 3 February 2022 23:12 (UTC +04:00)
N.Ireland first minister quits over post-Brexit trade rules

Northern Ireland's first minister resigned in protest at post-Brexit trade rules on Thursday, a day after another minister tried to halt some checks on agri-food goods coming from the rest of the United Kingdom, drawing European Union anger, Trend reports citing Reuters.

Paul Givan's decision may complicate talks between the EU and Britain to rework a politically divisive Northern Ireland protocol governing such trade that was agreed by London as part of its exit from the EU two years ago.

The protocol kept Northern Ireland in the EU's single market for goods in order to preserve a politically sensitive open border with EU member state Ireland. In so doing, though, it created an effective border in the Irish Sea, angering pro-British, pro-Brexit unionists in the province and spurring the British government to seek to rewrite the deal it signed up to.

Tensions over the arrangements flared again on Wednesday when Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots, like Givan a member of the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), ordered a halt to checks on the agri-food goods.

Poots' order was not immediately implemented. His department said officials had not refused the instruction but were "considering the wider implications of fulfilling the minister's request." Trade bodies reported that goods were still being inspected at Northern Irish ports.

"Now is the moment when we say 'Enough'", DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, a member of the British parliament, said in a speech.

"We are clear that the protocol represents an existential threat to the future of Northern Ireland's place within the Union (of the UK's four nations). The longer the protocol remains, the more it will harm the Union itself."

The DUP had for months threatened to frustrate the checks and the regional governance over its vehement opposition to the protocol, which it believe drives a wedge between the region and the rest of the UK across the Irish Sea.

A slim majority of Northern Irish voters view the protocol as being on balance a "good thing", a regular poll on the issue showed in October, a sharp rise on four months earlier.

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