Belfast (AFP)

Five months after the full entry into force of Brexit, Robin Mercer, owner of a chain of garden centers in Northern Ireland, is not angry against the new rules governing trade with the British province.

“Usually it took a few days to get a box of seeds from England to Northern Ireland,” explains the manager of the Hillmount Garden Center.

"Now it takes four weeks because of the paperwork," he told AFP.

"And it costs 140 pounds sterling (160 euros) per box, whether it's 400 or 600 pounds," he says.

The Northern Irish protocol, bitterly negotiated in 2019 between London and Brussels, de facto maintains the British province in the single market and the European customs union for goods.

This text, intended to avoid jeopardizing the fragile peace concluded in 1998 in Northern Ireland after three bloody decades, is bad for business, according to Robin Mercer, who believes that it must be "abolished".

For three decades, Northern Ireland was the scene of clashes between Unionists in favor of maintaining under the British crown and Republicans, in favor of a reunification of Ireland.

The conflict has left 3,500 dead.

It is to avoid the return of infrastructure to the border, where incidents were concentrated, that the protocol was designed.

Controls are thus moved to Irish ports.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had promised unfettered trade between Northern Ireland and Britain.

# photo1

A broken promise, underlines Robin Mercer, who employs 70 people.

New red tape is costly in time, money and stress.

- Buy in Europe -

"Bringing in stock is a real nightmare. We haven't brought in a single plant from England," he explains.

"No transporter is ready to do all the paperwork", he adds, "in fact, we have started to buy plants in Europe".

Garden centers are not the only ones suffering from the consequences of the Protocol in Northern Ireland, which is already the poorest region in the UK.

# photo2

The University of Ulster estimated that the local economy had contracted by 9.6% in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In the first weeks of the year, the new rules led to supply difficulties such that some supermarket shelves were found empty.

Under pressure, London unilaterally decided to delay the introduction of customs controls on goods from Great Britain until October.

A decision which led the European Union to initiate legal proceedings.

The full entry into force of the new rules worries Robin Mercer, "at the end of the year, they will start to apply them more".

The protocol helped trigger riots in early April in Unionist neighborhoods.

A total of 88 police officers were injured.

In February, controls at the ports of Belfast and Larne were suspended after the discovery of graffiti threatening the officers responsible for carrying them out.

In the ranks of Unionists, the protocol is denounced as a border in the Irish Sea, and a danger for the union of the United Kingdom.

"There cannot be any difference in status between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK without our agreement, and we have not given our agreement," Loyalist official David Campbell said on Wednesday.

# photo3

"No other country in the world would tolerate having suppliers forced to complete customs declarations to move goods from one place to another in its territory," he told British MPs.

"Why on earth would this be acceptable in the UK?"

© 2021 AFP