London, UK: The UK government has withdraw its threat threat to amend the Northern Ireland protocol and has agree a Brexit deal on goods crossing Irish sea.
It comes as talks on a Brexit trade deal talks stall. A joint statement from the UK and EU, agreed on minimising checks and controls on goods crossing the Irish sea into Northern Ireland “specifically for checks on animals, plants and derived products, export declarations, the supply of medicines, the supply of chilled meats, and other food products to supermarkets”.
The agreement will apply regardless of whether the two sides can agree a trade deal. Under the Northern Ireland protocol goods will not need to be checked along the Irish border and the region will continue to enforce the EU’s customs product standards rules.
This means, in order to comply with EU requirements, some checks will be needed on certain goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain.
But the agreement probably comes too late to prevent disruption after the end of the Brexit transition period. “There are 14 [working] days to go,” the Food and Drink Federation’s chief executive, Ian Wright, told MPs. when giving evidence to the Commons business committee on Brexit preparedness.
Wright warned that while he expected Kent and Operation Brock to work “reasonably well”, he was less confident about ports such as Holyhead, with goods heading to Northern Ireland. He called the Northern Ireland protocol a “complete shambles”, adding: “The idea that you can prepare for something as big as the change that’s going to happen is ridiculous, it’s a massive toll.”
Wright added that 43% of FDF members who supply Northern Ireland have said they were not going to do so in the first three months of next year. He told MPs that many companies had lost some of their customer base in the EU. “The problem is, if there’s any disruption to supply, you lose your customer pretty quickly and you do not get them back.”
Duncan Buchanan, policy director, Road Haulage Association said in a Tweet that “Deal or no deal, there won’t be a fully functioning border in place for 1 January. Government has left it too late to prepare business for post-transition trading.”
