The UK EU Pact on Northern Ireland Is Real Progress

Northern Ireland posed a severe test for the Britain’s future outside the EU. All the parties recognized that reinstating a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would jeopardize the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to the north 25 years ago. But this meant Northern Ireland had to remain part of Europe’s single market, which required in turn a customs border between the north and the rest of the UK. Thanks to former prime minister Boris Johnson’s haste to “get Brexit done,” combined with his pathological inattention to detail, the protocol intended to manage this arrangement was a disaster from the start.

Unionists in the north found the results intolerable and shut down the province’s power-sharing government in protest. This is the impasse that the new agreement aims to break.

The proposed solution is so straightforward that one has to wonder: What took so long? It proposes that goods moving to Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK will be divided between “red” and “green” channels. If registered “trusted traders” attest that their goods are for final sale in the north, the shipments won’t require the usual extensive paperwork and customs checks. The EU will also accept UK public-health standards for sensitive products such as fresh meat, so long as the products are labeled not for sale in the EU. The economic border in the Irish Sea will be mostly removed.

Under the plan, UK subsidies affecting companies in the north will in most cases no longer need to be approved in Brussels. When Britain alters its rates of value-added tax, the changes can apply in the north (so long as they conform to EU minimums). The deal addresses many other niggles and irritations. No customs paperwork for parcels sent to the north from friends, family or online sellers in Britain; take your dog from Liverpool to Belfast without a pet passport; medicines approved in Britain can be sold in the north even if the EU hasn’t yet approved them.

In the most surprising EU accommodation to Britain’s wishes, a so-called “Stormont brake” will allow Northern Ireland to query the introduction of new EU rules in the province. Instead of automatic implementation, a bipartisan quorum of the north’s legislature can direct London and Brussels to take another look at the changes. If agreement can’t be reached and the north refuses to comply, Europe can adopt targeted remedial measures.

Granted, the plan isn’t perfect from the unionists’ point of view. The European Court of Justice still has the last word on what EU law requires — but this could hardly be otherwise. The fact is, the plan gives more ground than the unionists and most Brexiters had expected, and they should welcome it as such. Leaders of the Democratic Unionist Party are considering their response.

Europe’s other governments should welcome the deal as well. The EU’s generous concessions will cost them next to nothing, and restoring friendly relations with the UK is very much in their own interests. Once this agreement is in place, the outlook for mutual advantage through renewed cooperation across a range of issues should be greatly improved. Brexit can’t easily be reversed, but some of the damage can be mended. Sunak and von der Leyen have done a good job.

A new agreement to replace the Northern Ireland Protocol breaks a pattern of mutual destruction between the UK and the EU.

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