EU concessions entirely pragmatic and peace-loving as realpolitik haunts Newsnight

The Graun reports that:

The EU will scrap 80% of checks on foods entering Northern Ireland from Britain...Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s Brexit commissioner, also announced that customs checks on manufactured goods would be halved as part of a significant concession to ease post-Brexit border problems....The EU proposals on goods and medicines represents a significant concession for Brussels, which had previously called for the UK to align with the bloc’s food and plant health rules to avoid checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland....

 

The EU is now proposing a “bespoke Northern Ireland specific solution”. This means checks would be removed on 80% of lines on supermarket shelves, with carefully labelled and sourced British sausages, the product that became emblematic of the row between the two sides, no longer at risk of being prohibited.

In a further concession, trucks carrying mixed loads – for example a lorry bound for a Northern Irish supermarket laden with meat, dairy and confectionery – would only have to provide one health certificate for each journey rather than one for each product line....Customs paperwork will be hugely reduced through a more generous definition of goods deemed “not at risk” of entering the EU single market via the Irish border.

 

In response to threats to affordability and availability of generic medicines in Northern Ireland, the EU will waive a requirement that medical manufacturers move out of Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Companies supplying the Northern Irish market can continue to have their supply “hub” in Britain, a privilege not usually afforded to countries outside the EU single market.

Following criticism that the protocol is “undemocratic”, the Northern Ireland assembly, civil society groups and businesses will be invited to take part in “structured dialogues” with the European commission on implementing the hundreds of EU laws that apply in the region, although they will not have any decision-making power.

About as close as the EC get to grasping the term 'democratic'?  However...

Šefčovič said: “It’s very clear that we cannot have access to the single market without the supervision of the ECJ.  ...In exchange for looser controls, the UK will have to ensure border inspection posts are up and running and that EU officials have access to real-time data on checks....Some market checks will also be intensified to prevent British goods being smuggled into the EU single market through Northern Ireland. Products for the Northern Irish market would have to carry individual labels, rather than labels on pallets.

So there is still much room for further mischief making. Indeed:

in Westminster there is a concern that the market surveillance and checks on sources of products will be as much of a problem for traders as the status quo. There was no solution contained within Šefčovič’s proposals to the issue of pets travelling from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK and back.

 

The EU people are trying to see this as a new pragmatic approach, burying the old problems of the (very recent) past and moving forward.That annoying Irish MEP and former Deputy Trade Commissioner, M. McGuiness,once so arrogant when Brexit was stalling, just said on Newsnight she wanted to get the best for the people of Northern Ireland, and the EU ambassador to the UK, J de Almeida, also appeared to say it was time to move on and be pragmatic. Not concessions, he said, but proposals.

 

Apparently, EU persons had been to NI and asked people, mostly 'businessmen', what the problems were, and were responding to their concerns. No businessmen had mentioned the ECJ, of course. That was sufficient democratic consultation for the EC though. Another Yesterday's Man, L Varadkar weighed in with his view that no country would ever trust the UK if we broke our word and tore up the Protocol, a view reinforced by the latest Cummings tweet saying that of course they only signed to get the deal through and had no intention of actually implementing it

 

Even C4 News and Newsnight asked why the EC had not made all these concessions earlier, and whether this meant the Protocol was no longer as non-negotiable and as written in stone as it had appeared to be in the Summer.

 

Both journos also feared, as does the Graun, that' Brussels officials were “preparing for the worst” amid signs Boris Johnson is set to reject the terms of the deal.'

 

 

Moral panics-- a technical account

 A very interesting account in today's Briefings for Britain on how a Remain/Rejoin narrative was able to gain a good deal of traction by combining and amplifying a number of events focused on the petrol shortage. That  rapidly got connected to a shortage of truck drivers which in turn led to denunciations of policies to exclude cheap immigrant labour after Brexit as we saw.

 

Elements of the shortage for the author (G. Prins) included the recent switch to more ethanol in the mix -- E10 fuel as it is called -- for 'green' reasons which caused temporary problems in stocks, Prins argues. These minor shortages were then amplified in social media panics driven by a deliberate campaign and Government were slow to resist.

Incidentally, the Daily Mail (!) floated a story, I recall, that the Road Haulage Association's PR Department specifically released a story about panic buying at petrol stations and the person responsible was a notable Remainer -- I'd have to look up that source so I can't rely on it yet.

Prins uses models from cybernetics and psychology to explain how small disturbances can get amplified into major disturbances, which I will leave you to purse. It reminded me a bit of some chaos theory. His is a bit of a conspiratorial account -- he talks of Rejoiner Central and specifies the ubiquitous Gina Miller and Jolyon Maugham, familiar names to those still haunted by the appalling events of the hung Parliament and the High Court interventions in the run-up to the final split with the EU.

He also0 argues that the pressure is now being applied to a rather odd debate about whether the UK should reapply to join the EU Galileo project satellite navigation system like the US GPS from which we were excluded (from the military bits anyway)  as a 'third country'  if we dared leave the EU. It would introduce EU control through the old backdoor again, of course, and it looks like our 'own' One-Web system might be better anyway.

Fish wars spark into life again

 The Gruan is particularly keen on this story and has reported it for a few days running:

France threatens to cut UK and Jersey energy supply in fishing row

The EU could hit Britain and Jersey’s energy supply over the UK’s failure to provide sufficient fishing licences to French fishers, France’s EU affairs minister has said. ...Last week a third of French boats applying to fish in Jersey’s waters were turned down by the island’s government. The previous week the UK government provided only 12 of 47 French vessels with permits for its coastal waters. The UK and Jersey authorities have said the vessels that had been turned down had failed to provide evidence of operating in the relevant waters.

Under the post-Brexit trade and cooperation agreement struck on Christmas Eve, in case of a dispute with Jersey the EU can take unilateral measures “proportionate to the alleged failure by the respondent party and the economic and societal impact thereof”.

That term 'proportionate' might be interesting.

Unilateral measures affecting the energy supply to the rest of the UK would also theoretically be possible. But France would need to gain the consent of other member states in both cases and the action would need to be proportionate, as the UK would have the right to take the EU to arbitration after any such move.

Note the GHRaun's careful usage of the preferred term 'fishers'.