Northern Irish head of government questions Brexit agreement

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London / Belfast (dpa) - The Northern Irish Prime Minister Arlene Foster considers the regulations in the Brexit agreement with Northern Ireland to be “unworkable”.

The politician of the Protestant party DUP said on Saturday the British radio station BBC 4.

She now wants to work with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Irish government in Dublin to abolish the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol.

It leads to considerable tension in the British part of the country, said Foster.

The regulation, according to which the British Northern Ireland remains part of the European single market despite Brexit, had recently led to difficulties in trade and partly empty supermarket shelves in the province.

However, the background to the current demands is the triggering of an emergency mechanism in the Northern Ireland Protocol, which the EU is at least considering.

The move had led to an outcry across all political camps in Britain and both parts of Ireland on Friday.

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Brussels had announced that it would make exports of vaccines subject to approval in future.

According to the announcement, controls at the border between the EU member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland also seemed possible.

In order to avoid precisely this, however, Brexit negotiators had struggled for an agreement for years.

Controls at the inner-Irish border are considered poison for the fragile peace process in the former civil war province of Northern Ireland.

The EU Commission made it clear in the evening that it did not want to trigger the emergency mechanism, but the political damage is great.

Prime Minister Johnson was "seriously concerned".

The government in Dublin, which apparently was not involved in the decision, was irritated.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney warned that lessons must be learned from the incident.

“The (Northern Ireland) Protocol is not something to be lightly handled.

It is an essential and hard-won compromise to protect peace and trade for many, "Coveney said.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210130-99-231973 / 2