UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has expressed confidence of using a new “window of opportunity” to finally reach an agreement on the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol after holding talks with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
Sunak said that “with goodwill and pragmatism” a deal could be found following a meeting of the British-Irish Council, a two-day gathering in Blackpool of representatives from the UK and Irish governments, and the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales.
Ministers from Northern Ireland were absent because of the six-month impasse in forming a new government in Belfast following the Democratic Unionist Party’s refusal to form an administration until its concerns about the protocol have been resolved.
Sunak said his focus was to find a “negotiated solution” with the EU.
Although Sunak’s administration has given the impression that its focus is on responding to domestic economic priorities such as the cost of living and fending off a prolonged recession, the mood music in terms of EU-UK relations during the six-week premiership of Liz Truss and now Sunak has been much more positive than during Boris Johnson’s government.
Earlier this week, European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič insisted that he did not believe the EU and the UK were “worlds apart” on resolving the implementation of the protocol.
“If there is political will, I’m sure that we can sort it out within a couple of weeks because our negotiating teams know these topics from all angles,” he said.
However, that risks being contradicted by an internal Commission memorandum, obtained by EURACTIV, which stated that meetings between officials from the UK and the EU executive should only take place if they are “legally mandatory”, and relate to the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement, or relate strictly to the war in Ukraine.
In the note circulated to senior European Commission officials, the Secretary-General of the Commission Ilze Juhansone requested that “all Directorates-General and Services inform the Secretariat-General of any requests for bilateral meetings with United Kingdom officials or United Kingdom stakeholders to be made or that have been received, irrespective of the level of seniority”.
“Declining a meeting request should be explained on the basis of the recent developments in the EU-United Kingdom relations,” the Commission’s top civil servant added.
EU imposes meeting ban on UK officials
EU officials have been urged not to hold meetings with UK counterparts unless they are strictly related to the war in Ukraine or are ‘legally mandatory’, in the latest indication of frosty relations between Brussels and London.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
Source: euractiv.com
