The EU’s stance on the Northern Ireland Protocol has “hardened” in the face of the UK threat to unilaterally scrap part of the arrangements, the Minister for Foreign Affairs has warned.
Simon Coveney urged the UK government to step back from its plan to publish domestic legislation that would override elements of the post-Brexit protocol governing trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The UK government is expected to table its controversial Bill in Westminster next week amid reports of differences within the Cabinet on how far-reaching the legislative proposals should be.
Mr Coveney and Taoiseach Micheál Martin are holding talks with Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer in Dublin on Thursday to discuss the ongoing stand-off over arrangements that require regulatory checks and customs declarations on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Ahead of the meetings, Mr Starmer accused Boris Johnson of taking a “wrecking ball” to UK relations with Ireland and the EU.
UK foreign secretary Liz Truss is next week expected to use domestic law to override aspects of the protocol, which was jointly agreed by the UK and EU as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement.
The UK is moving without the consent of the EU to change the terms of the international treaty in a bid to reduce the checks the protocol requires on the movement of goods across the Irish Sea.
The EU has made clear that such a move would represent a breach of international law and could prompt retaliatory action from the bloc.
Mr Coveney said publishing the legislation would “cause a lot more problems than it solves” in respect of Anglo-Irish relations and UK-EU relations.
“In many ways from my experience
, and I’ve been to Finland to Sweden to Estonia to Latvia, and I’ve been speaking to many other EU foreign ministers, in many ways in the last number of weeks the EU position has hardened because I don’t think there’s a single capital across the EU and anybody in the European Commission that believes, at the moment anyway, that the British Government is serious about a negotiated solution, because there is no signal coming from London that they are.“Instead, all of the signals are about unilateral action, making demands with no willingness to compromise, and that has hardened the EU response to what they’re seeing coming out of London now.
“So, we need to find a way to arrest this rot in relationships and instead to look to compromise, to negotiation, to dialogue, to solve what are genuine issues and concerns.”