The UK government and the EU are in a stand-off over the Northern Ireland protocol. David Frost, the British minister for EU relations, has threatened to invoke Article 16 of the protocol, which allows either side to take safeguarding measures in response to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties or diversion of trade”. But Article 16 is not the ‘get out of jail free’ card that it is frequently said to be.
The British side has two sorts of problems with the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol (to give it its proper name): some are practical, and people in Northern Ireland are feeling them directly; some are more abstruse and haven’t actually caused any difficulties yet. Most of the practical problems can be solved within the terms of the protocol. In contrast, solving the abstruse problems would require it to be rewritten – which just won’t happen.
Sausages and pet passports
Among the practical problems are issues of customs and regulatory checks and controls. These flow from the fact that the protocol applies the regulations of the EU single market to goods sold in Northern Ireland and also applies both those rules and EU customs rules to goods coming into Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
