This week heralds the arrival in Northern Ireland of yet more overregulation, bureaucratic overreach, and political incompetence. No, Keir Starmer isn\u2019t making an unannounced visit to Belfast.\u00a0From this month, many thousands of food products imported from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will have to display warnings on their packaging highlighting that these goods are not to be brought into the European Union. The reason why is essentially a bungled Brexit deal for which thousands of business \u2013 and millions of customers \u2013 will pay the price.<\/p>\n
\nIt is yet another reason for British firms to stop doing business in Northern Ireland<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The Windsor Framework \u2013 the result of the UK\u2019s Northern Ireland-focused post-Brexit legal agreement with the EU \u2013 ensured that Northern Ireland remained within the EU single market for goods. This meant that products can flow freely throughout the island as no hard border exists between Northern Ireland and the Republic. At least that\u2019s what was promised in theory.<\/p>\n
In reality, this soft border has made trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland increasingly difficult. Confusing and unworkable regulations have stymied the flow of goods to Northern Ireland as checks on arrival take an increasingly long time, packaging requirements are different, and costs are increased.<\/p>\n
From October 2023, meat products entering Northern Ireland had to be labelled as being \u2018Not for EU\u2019 in order to ensure they weren\u2019t being sold in the Republic of Ireland; these rules were expanded to include dairy products from October 2024. And now, from this month, the scope of these regulations will be drastically increased as the Windsor Framework\u2019s implementation reaches its final phase. Packaged fruit, vegetables, and herbs; fresh, frozen, and processed fish; honey; eggs; chilled, frozen, or shelf-stable composite products, such as ready meals and jars of sauce; all will be subject to new rules which change their packaging to ensure no Pot Noodle bound for Belfast is sold south of the border.<\/p>\n
This matters because it is yet another reason for British companies to stop doing business in Northern Ireland. As Stuart Machin, the CEO of Marks & Spencer,\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0on Friday, this regulatory expansion just adds \u2018yet another layer of unnecessary costs and red tape for food retailers like M&S.\u2019 Machin went on to state that over a thousand more M&S products will require alternate packaging specifically tailored for Northern Ireland, while an additional four hundred products will have to undergo extra checks in what has become known as the \u2018Red Lane\u2019 \u2013 the customs channel for goods deemed at risk of entering the EU. In short,\u00a0Machin said<\/a>, it\u2019s \u2018bureaucratic madness\u2019.<\/p>\n
All of these additional regulations in Northern Ireland undermine the idea of the Union, dissuading British businesses from offering goods and services in a constituent country of the United Kingdom. It has had a measurable impact, too, as the Office for National Statistics\u00a0found recently<\/a>. Between 2020\u00a0\u2013 the final year before the Northern Ireland Protocol on the Brexit withdrawal agreement came into effect \u2013 and the start of this year, the percentage of retail, wholesale, and car repair businesses in Great Britain which sold goods into Northern Ireland had decreased from 17.5 per cent to only 12.4 per cent; the percentage of manufacturing businesses which sold to Northern Ireland decreased from 20.1 per cent to 12.9 per cent.<\/p>\n
The issue of the effectual trade border in the Irish Sea is a politically contentious one in Northern Ireland. It highlights the difference in treatment of people in Northern Ireland compared with the rest of the United Kingdom \u2013 raising questions about whether the initial idea of Brexit as \u2018taking back control<\/a>\u2019 ever materialised.<\/p>\n
Jim Allister, a Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) MP, and one of the fiercest critics of the Windsor Framework,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that British businesses \u2018will have to play by EU rules to trade within their own country. That\u2019s a fundamental breach of sovereignty.\u2019 I spoke to another elected representative from the TUV about the new rules, who decried them as little more than \u2018ridiculous and unnecessary bureaucracy forced upon us\u2019, highlighting that \u2018Northern Ireland did not get the Brexit the United Kingdom voted for as a nation\u2019.<\/p>\n
Many of these issues could quite easily be solved if a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) deal were to be signed between the UK and the EU; this would align the regulations between the two bodies and make trade easier. Naturally, however, this also goes against the ideals of what Brexit was portrayed to be, as while it doesn\u2019t exactly hand over our sovereignty on the issue, it does ensure the UK and EU are treading the same line.<\/p>\n
Labour\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0a deal on this back in May, however this has yet to materialise and negotiations are, allegedly, still ongoing. Given Starmer\u2019s record of negotiating, it is not difficult to imagine how little say we might have over our own internal trade regulations as a result; the Prime Minister is no stranger to dismantling British sovereignty, as\u00a0Chagos<\/a> and\u00a0Gibraltar<\/a>\u00a0show.<\/p>\n
In the mean time, internal trade within the United Kingdom is likely to get harder before it gets easier. If the past decade of politicians were supposed to be acting in favour of British interests, they are doing a good job of hiding it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week heralds the arrival in Northern Ireland of yet more overregulation, bureaucratic overreach, and political incompetence. No,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-228489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114776349268151512","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}