The United Kingdom government on Wednesday outlined its proposals to get the Northern Ireland assembly back up and running after a political deadlock of nearly two years caused by divisions over post-Brexit trade rules. London published the deal it has struck with the pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) that could see the devolved government in the British province restored in the coming days.The DUP walked out of the power-sharing government at Stormont in February 2022 to protest post-Brexit trade arrangements for Northern Ireland, which has the UK’s only land border with the European Union. The agreement would notably remove checks on goods shipped from mainland Great Britain - England, Scotland and Wales - to final destinations in Northern Ireland.That would effectively scrap the contentious so-called Irish Sea border that had angered unionists who feared it would cut Northern Ireland adrift from the three other UK nations and make a united Ireland more likely.A key part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of sectarian violence over British rule in Northern Ireland, was to keep an open border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member, to the south. But the 2016 Brexit vote caused a problem - how to protect the European single market and customs union if the UK was no longer part of it, when there was effectively an open back door for goods to cross in and out via Northern Ireland.The post-Brexit trading arrangements signed between London and Brussels sought to square that circle by introducing goods checks from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and partly keeping the British province under EU rules. DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson on Tuesday said that party members had voted to approve the new agreement, which removed the "border within the UK internal market".UK Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris told parliament that under the deal, "the idea of automatic dynamic alignment with EU law will no longer apply". "We will also future-proof Northern Ireland’s position within the UK internal market against any future protocol that would create a new EU law alignment for Northern Ireland and with it barriers for Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom," he added.The deal appears to represent a change to the Windsor Framework agreement signed between the UK and European Union in February 2023, which kept Northern Ireland inside the EU’s single market for goods. If so, it is believed the changes would need to be approved by Brussels. The European Commission did not immediately respond to request for comment from AFP.Downing Street says the deal contains "significant" changes to the framework’s "operation", but is not about altering the "fundamentals" of the framework. The UK parliament is expected to vote through the legislation on Thursday, paving the way for the DUP and the nationalist pro-Irish Sinn Fein to elect a speaker and restore power-sharing, possibly on Saturday.
February 01, 2024 | 12:54 AM