In analysing the outcome of the Protocol negotiations, one has to look at the prime interests of the main actors involved. The EU The EU has no huge interest in N. Ireland. It is not a large market in the context of the Single Market as a whole. Provided NI doesn’t become a backdoor whereby contraband goods from all over the world can enter the Single Market, no major EU interests are at stake. The protocol had become a huge …
David Allen Green has long been my British legal blogger of choice. I may not always agree with him politically, but he is often very insightful in his de-construction of the legal issues facing Britain. In a recent blogpost entitled The seven ways the matter of Brexit and the island of Ireland can be ultimately resolved, he turned his attention to the protocol, and I quote: One: the European Union and/or the Single Market ceasing to exist. This is highly …
Recent discussions about the Protocol in Northern Ireland have focused on the problems it poses for the DUP. But from an EU perspective it seeks to solve a far larger problem for the EU as a whole. Much of the analysis of Brexit has been in terms of it being an English nationalist project. What has been missed is the extent to which it is also a political libertarian project. Much of the driving force behind Brexiteer ideology has been …
When I saw the headline to Brian Walker’s piece, Rather than keep slagging off the DUP over the Protocol, let’s recognise their better points, I expected to see a forensic analysis of the DUP’s 7 tests for determining whether the Protocol had been adequately reformed to meet their requirements for re-entering the devolved institutions in Northern Ireland. I was looking forward to seeing what better elements might be extracted from them that could be congruent with the EU and its …
