EU confirms Brexit checks continue in Northern Ireland – POLITICO Europe

LONDON Post-Brexit checks at Northern Ireland's ports will continue despite a ministerial order to halt them, the European Commission said.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said the EUs experts on the ground were satisfied that the checks the U.K. signed up to as part of the Brexit divorce deal are still being carried out.

On Wednesday, the Democratic Unionist Party's Edwin Poots a long-standing opponent of the post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland saidhe had orderedhis most senior official to stop the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks at Northern Irish ports from midnight Wednesday.

The checks are required under the terms of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreements Northern Ireland protocol, agreed between the U.K. and the EU. But Poots said he had received legal advice backing his position that he is able to halt the checks in the absence of wider approval of Northern Irelands ruling Executive.

The U.K.s Environment Secretary George Eustice held crisis talks with Poots over his order to halt Brexit checks, according to British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons official spokesman, who also confirmed that checks are continuing to take place in Northern Ireland, as they have done before.

The prime minister told reporters during a visit to Blackpool Thursday that it was crazy to have checks on goods that are basically circulating within the single market of the United Kingdom.

He called for common-sensical practical steps to weed out, to check on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain that might be at risk of entering the EU single market through the Republic of Ireland.

Now we can do that, but without having a full panoply of checks on the GB/NI coast and at the airport, and thats the way forward, Johnson said. I think practical common sense is whats needed.

Addressing the House of Commons Thursday, Eustice said it is entirely unnecessary at this stage for the government to intervene. He told MPs that the overarching responsibility for implementing international agreements rests with the U.K. government, but delivering many of the requirements under the Northern Ireland protocol, including agri-food checks, are a devolved matter and responsibility for doing so falls to the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in the Northern Ireland Executive.

Mamer refused to speculate on whether the EU could retaliate by suspending the Brexit trade deal if the Northern Ireland protocol requirements were not met, stressing that for the moment the Commissions preliminary information is that those checks are continuing.

What concerns us is not what are the arrangements that are found within the United Kingdom on who is responsible for taking what decision when it comes to the checks, but the fact that the provisions that are in the agreement, on the checks which are foreseen by the agreement, will be respected, he said.

Brussels stressed the protocol is the one and only solution the EU and the U.K. have found to protect the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement, which ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

Business lobby groups argue they need certainty about what regulations they need to comply with and simplicity to keep moving goods across the border.

The director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, Aodhn Connolly, said: Even if the checks are not in place there is a requirement to have the correct authorizations.To put it another way, even though the likelihood of getting stopped on the roads is small, we still all have valid insurance.

U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is holding a video call with Commission Vice President Maroefovion making the protocol less burdensome for people and businesses in Northern Ireland.

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EU confirms Brexit checks continue in Northern Ireland - POLITICO Europe