Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party on Monday said it would vote against a key element of the British government’s agreement with the European Union on post-Brexit trade rules in a setback for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Parliament will on Wednesday debate and vote on the so-called “Stormont brake”, part of the Windsor Framework agreed upon in February in a bid to reset relations.
The brake enables Britain to prevent new EU laws from being applied to goods in Northern Ireland and from being asked to do so by a third of lawmakers in the province’s devolved legislature. The DUP has complained that this does not apply to existing EU law.
Wednesday’s vote is still likely to pass while the opposition Labour Party supports the overall agreement, but the DUP’s decision could bring an increase to the number of eurosceptic members of Sunak’s own Conservative Party who refuse to back it.
The European Research Group (ERG) of pro-Brexit Conservative lawmakers is due to set out its verdict on Tuesday.
The DUP has for a year boycotted Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government over its opposition to post-Brexit trade rules, which effectively keep Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market so as to avoid the need for a hard border on the island itself, of Ireland.
A border would be seen as an endangering to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 which had largely brought to an end three decades of armed conflict in Northern Ireland which involving militants seeking a united Ireland, the “loyalists”, who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom and the British security forces.
source:
Reuters
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