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.'
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