In a blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the union leader says that ‘the imposition of EU law’ on Northern Ireland has not been resolved.
The Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) says it will vote against a crucial element of the government’s new deal with the European Union on post-Brexit trade rules for the United Kingdom.
Parliament will debate and vote on Wednesday on the so-called “Stormont brake”, a mechanism in the deal struck last month that seeks to resolve tensions caused by Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit arrangements in 2020 .
The new framework is expected to facilitate controls on goods moving from other parts of the UK into Northern Ireland, a British territory.
It would also give Northern Ireland’s legislators a say in what EU rules it must implement under the complicated conditions of the UK’s exit from the bloc. The Stormont brake would allow the UK to prevent new EU laws from applying to goods in Northern Ireland if requested by a third of lawmakers in the county’s devolved legislature.
The DUP’s backlash is a setback for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and could fuel opposition to the deal from skeptical members of his own conservative party.
But Wednesday’s vote is likely to go ahead as the main opposition Labor party backs the overall deal.
The issue led to the collapse of the Northern Ireland government when the leader of the DUP withdrew from power-sharing arrangements in the area under the post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol of 2020.
“While it represents real progress, the ‘brake’ does not address the fundamental issue, which is the Protocol’s imposition of EU law,” DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said in a statement Monday.
“Our party officials… met this morning and unanimously agreed that in the context of our continued concerns and the need to secure further progress as we continue to seek clarification, change and reworking, our MPs are opposed to the draft Statutory instrument would tune,” he said.
Convincing the DUP to end the boycott of the power-sharing government has been a major test for the British government.
But Donaldson suggested the party might be able to live with a modified version of the current deal.
“We will continue to work with the Government on any outstanding issues related to the Windsor Framework package to try to restore the delicate political balances in Northern Ireland and to make further progress on all these matters,” Donaldson said.
