Dublin New chances for an agreement between the EU and Great Britain in the Northern Ireland dispute mean that the new elections in Belfast are postponed. British Minister for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris announced in the House of Commons on Wednesday that the election date would initially be pushed back by six weeks, to April 13 at the latest.
The background to this is the failure to form a government in Belfast due to a blockade by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is loyal to London. For the election postponement, the British government must change the law.
The postponement is seen in London as a sign that there has been movement in the dispute with Brussels over the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol. There are increasing signs that the new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants to resolve the conflict with the EU quickly.
At the beginning of the week, Sunak met with EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen on the sidelines of the climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and both had confirmed their willingness to reach an agreement. “I believe that there are no worlds between our respective positions,” said EU negotiator Maros Sefcovic at the same time after a meeting with British parliamentarians in London.
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Irish Foreign Minister Simon Conveney is also confident. “I am optimistic that we can reach an agreement before the end of this year,” he told reporters in Dublin. There is a great interest on both sides in resolving the dispute. The prerequisite, however, is that London stands by its contractual obligations and does not unilaterally terminate the Northern Ireland Protocol.
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Sunak is due to meet his Irish counterpart Micháel Martin in Blackpool on Thursday. Both sides hope that this will bring them closer together. “We can reach a solution through negotiations,” said Secretary of State Conveney.
He stressed that the differences between nationalists and unionists in the Northern Irish population were narrowing. “The political center is growing,” said the diplomat. However, hasty elections in Northern Ireland would not solve the problem. “The dispute will not end in Belfast, but in Brussels and London.”
Brexit has raised the Northern Ireland issue
The Northern Ireland Protocol is part of the Brexit Treaty and is intended to regulate trade between the Northern Irish province and the rest of Great Britain. When Great Britain left the EU, Brussels and London agreed that Northern Ireland would remain part of the EU internal market in order to prevent a “hard” customs border on the island of Ireland and thus new conflicts between Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists.
However, the resulting customs border in the Irish Sea has been causing resentment in London for months. The controls demanded by Brussels are too bureaucratic and would put Northern Ireland at a disadvantage and remove it from the rest of the UK. The situation is made even more difficult by the fact that the London-loyal DUP has prevented a government from being formed in the regional parliament in Belfast since the local elections in May 2022 in order to force the suspension of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
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The Unionists of the DUP fear that the province could be cut off politically from London and that a reunification of Ireland could come closer. The nationalist Sinn Fein party has been the largest party in Northern Ireland since May, giving it the right to lead regional government. However, the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998 stipulated that this required the consent of both population groups in Northern Ireland. The DUP can therefore put itself across.
Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, had introduced a package of laws in the spring that would allow the government in London to unilaterally withdraw from individual parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol should it deem it appropriate. In return, Brussels has threatened trade sanctions should the law come into force. The House of Commons has already approved the initiative with its Conservative majority, and the project is now in the British House of Lords.
So far, Sunak has presented himself as a staunch Brexit supporter and also supported the legislative initiative to unilaterally terminate the Northern Ireland Protocol. However, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet, he had voted against using Article 16 of the Protocol to sweep away the entire deal.
Sunak has earned a reputation as a pragmatist
The 42-year-old is considered undogmatic on the Northern Ireland issue and has earned a reputation as a pragmatist. The economic crisis in Great Britain has increased the pressure on both sides to reach an agreement, since neither Brussels nor London want to risk an escalation with mutual trade sanctions in view of the geopolitical risks.
It is unclear to what extent Sunak can break away from the right wing of the Tories with the hard Brexit supporters. Much will depend on whether he overcomes opposition from Northern Ireland Unionists to a compromise with Brussels. Without the support of the DUP, the British prime minister is threatened with an uprising by the right-wing party.
It is also still unclear what a compromise with Brussels could look like. Both sides would not only have to agree on the extent of customs controls. An exchange of live data on freight traffic between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain is to play an important role in this.
The technology for this will be tested in the coming weeks, it is said. The question of the extent to which the European Court of Justice remains the last resort in disputes is also hotly debated.
No one in London and Dublin believes that a new election will resolve the political deadlock in Belfast. The only thing that all sides agree on is that they want the problem to be over by the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement next spring. The historic treaty of 1998 ended the civil war in Northern Ireland and is regarded as the basis for peaceful coexistence of the population groups in Northern Ireland.
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