John Bruton
There are increasing grounds for concern that the UK is backing away from the legal and political commitments it made last October in its Withdrawal Agreement with the EU. The Withdrawal Agreement was made before the UK General Election, when Boris Johnson led a minority government. Now he has an overall majority, and the prospect of four more years in office. He has more weight to throw around, at least in the short term. Some of the governments on the EU side are not in such a strong position.
There is a suspicion that he is exploiting that to back away from legally and politically binding commitments he gave to the EU last October in order to appear to “get Brexit done” before his own General Election.
For example, the newly appointed Northern Ireland Secretary has stated that there “will be no border down the Irish Sea”. Boris Johnson has made similar comments.
This could be interpreted as meaning that the UK was acting in bad faith when it agreed last October to the Withdrawal Agreement and to its legally binding protocol on Ireland.
In the Protocol, the UK committed itself to what amount to border controls between Britain and Northern Ireland.
While the word “border” is not used in the Protocol, the UK accepted in Article 5, that EU customs duties would be collected on goods coming into Northern Ireland from Britain which if those goods were “at risk of subsequently being moved” to the rest of Ireland and thus into the EU.
It was also envisaged that goods would also have to be checked for the purposes of collecting the appropriate amount of VAT, and verifying their origin. EU officials were to have a right to be present when this checking was being done, so as to assure themselves that the UK officials were correctly interpreting the EU laws that would apply in Northern Ireland.
The protocol contains detailed provisions for determining how UK goods, that were at risk of entering the EU through Ireland, might be identified and controlled, and how the customs duties on them might be collected. This was not to be done at the land border in Ireland, so it had to be done before the goods entered Northern Ireland, effectively on either side of the Irish Sea.
It is difficult to see how the new Northern Secretary’s comment that there would be no border in the Irish Sea can be compatible with this legally binding protocol agreed to by the UK, unless one interprets that the word “border” as only applying to a border on land.
The UK Government also seems to be backing away from the commitments, on ensuring fair competition, it made in the Political Declaration which it agreed with the EU as the framework for the Withdrawal Agreement.
This Political Declaration, while not legally binding in the same way as the Withdrawal Treaty itself, is part of the Withdrawal process under Article 50 of the EU Treaties, and it is referred to in the Withdrawal Treaty.
For either the EU or the UK to back away from what they had agreed in the Political Declaration would amount to bad faith, and could poison future relations. It would not be quickly forgotten.
One can accept that, once the UK leaves the EU, the EU should accept the autonomy of the UK’s decision making processes, and vice versa.
It a legal sense, there should be a relationship of equals between the EU and the UK.
But if there is to be trade between the EU and UK, it is only common sense that there be basic compatibility of standards. Indeed most modern trade agreements are more about standards than they are about mere tariffs and quotas.
The Political Declaration, agreed by the UK last October, makes repeated references to the need for provisions for a level playing field and fair competition in any future agreement between the UK and the EU.
Article 17 says the Partnership between the UK and the EU should ensure
” a level playing field for open and fair competition”.
Article 77 commits the UK and the EU to
“uphold the common high standards applicable to the EU and the UK at the end of the transition period in areas of state aid, competition, social and employment standards, environment, climate change, and relevant tax matters”.
The common standards applying at the end of the transition period at the end of this year are the existing EU standards. The UK agreed there would be no rolling back of these EU standards.
But Boris Johnson said, in a speech in Greenwich earlier this month, that
“There is no need for a free trade agreement to involve accepting EU rules on competition policy, subsidies, social protection, the environment or anything else anymore than the EU is obliged to accept UK rules”.
Prime Minister Johnson’s EU negotiator, David Frost went further this week when he said
“to think that we might accept EU supervise of so called level playing field issues simply fails to understand the point of what we are doing”
adding that the UK must be free to “set laws that suit us” and that
“this is the point of the whole project”.
On the face of it, these statements appear to be a flat contradiction of what Mr Johnson and his government agreed to last October in the Political Declaration. Indeed the dismissive reference to a“so called” level playing field, suggests Mr Frost does not take seriously what his Prime Minister agreed in the Political Declaration last October.
The level playing field provisions in the Political Declaration clearly envisage mutual supervision of the EU by the UK, and vice versa, to ensure that neither side does anything that interferes with open and fair competition or rolls back standards.
There may be some room for benign interpretation.
Prime Minister Johnson could say he is referring to rules to be made in future by either the EU or the UK, and not to the rules in force now.
But the Political Declaration only says that the “common high standards “, in force at the end of the transition period, should not be reduced.
It does not prevent new rules being made by either side, so long as they do not reduce these standards. So it is difficult to know what Mr Johnson and Mr Frost are talking about.
The statement by David Frost, rejecting any EU supervision of what the UK does, and presumably vice versa, would make normal relations impossible.
The UK, if it wants good relations with all its immediate neighbours, should dial back the rhetoric. Trust needs to be rebuilt.
The EU should also be careful not to overestimate its own negotiating leverage, and not to look for certainty on everything.
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John Bruton is former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland and former EU Ambassador to the United States.