Aurelia Butler

London and Brussels could announce a deal to resolve a bitter dispute over post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland as early as this week. But with final negotiations under way, one sticking point remains: the region’s biggest pro-UK party is demanding that it should not be subject to EU laws. The Democratic Unionist Party has paralysed Northern Ireland’s political institutions since May to press for changes to the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, which sets the rules for post-Brexit trade. It is demanding that the region be allowed a say in the laws which govern it. When Brexit took effect in 2021, Northern Ireland was left inside the EU single market for goods and a trade border was put in the Irish Sea to avoid a politically sensitive land border with its EU neighbour, Ireland. But hardline unionists and the UK government say the protocol creates a “democratic deficit” that leaves Northern Ireland subject to EU rules.What is the ‘democratic deficit’?Under the protocol, the region has to follow EU rules for trade. The European Court of Justice, the bloc’s top court, has the final say in any disputes.However, this means that when regulations are changed, Belfast must follow suit. That could mean amending as many as 300 regulations that were still in force when the UK left the EU in 2020, and which still apply in Northern Ireland.Whether new regulations for goods trade in the single market apply in Northern Ireland can be discussed by an EU-UK joint committee that oversees the working of the Brexit trade agreement, chaired by the UK foreign secretary and the EU’s Brexit commissioner. If the UK objects but the EU believes they are necessary, Brussels could take unspecified “remedial measures” to force London to comply. DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson told UTV last month that if EU rules changed significantly from the current UK legislation it “would seriously impact our ability to trade within the United Kingdom because our standards would then diverge from UK standards”. A UK bill giving ministers powers to scrap large parts of the protocol, which is currently on ice in the House of Lords, would allow traders to follow UK or EU regulations in Northern Ireland — a route the DUP favours. EU diplomats say the legislation is a red line for Brussels and is akin to a loaded gun on the negotiating table. But hardline unionists say they object to the EU’s top court having the final say over application of the protocol.What are the obstacles to fixing it? The EU has ruled out any renegotiation of the protocol. Under Article 18 of the protocol, Northern Ireland’s legislators have the right to a vote late next year on whether or not to maintain some of the rules. Such a vote can potentially be held every four years, but will not allow politicians to scrap the protocol altogether.The region’s complicated power-sharing arrangements mean that agreement between the traditional nationalist and unionist communities — required for sensitive decisions — is difficult. Despite the DUP’s opposition, a majority of legislators backs the protocol as it stands.Jon Tonge, politics professor at the University of Liverpool, said that given the “dysfunctional nature” of the Stormont executive and the veto powers both sides hold, “it would be downright dangerous” to give too much say to legislators. Georg Riekeles, who helped negotiate the protocol for the EU and now works for the European Policy Centre think-tank, said Article 18 provided the region with sufficient democratic accountability. He warned that a “pick and choose” mechanism was unsustainable. “It would become the occasion of endless debates and ultimately the unravelling of the framework.” he said.Can the problems be overcome? One suggestion by the European Commission is for Northern Irish businesses and politicians to be given a consultative role. There is already an example of this for non-EU members Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, which are aligned with the single market and attend consultative groups with member states before legislation is drawn up. They can also veto the application of new laws in their countries but in practice this has never happened.“One could envisage a process that involves consulting the Northern Ireland assembly,” said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe managing director at consultancy Eurasia Group. “There is awareness of the specific situation with Northern Ireland and where things have a significant impact. Regulations coming down the track will be discussed and the joint committee will be a vehicle to do that.”Brussels points out that the implementation of the protocol can be adapted. Last year, for example, the commission unilaterally changed its regulations to prevent a shortage of medicines in Northern Ireland. “It shows that the protocol has the flexibility to work on the ground,” Maroš Šefčovič, the Brexit commissioner, said at the time.Others have suggested that the role of the ECJ as the ultimate arbiter of the protocol could be softened by Brussels committing to only taking legal action against alleged breaches of the trading arrangements in very limited circumstances.Michael Dougan, European Law professor at the University of Liverpool, said that could “mollify” London. “Easy to deliver, without amending protocol,” he tweeted. More

Rishi Sunak on Monday urged Eurosceptic Tory MPs to back him in his bid to end the bitter dispute with Brussels over post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, but opposition to a deal was hardening.The British prime minister still hopes to finalise an agreement this week, including providing a new role for the Northern Ireland assembly in scrutinising new EU rules that apply to the region.Sunak hopes that efforts to address what he says is a “democratic deficit” in the so-called Northern Ireland protocol could help to sell a deal to the region’s Democratic Unionist party and to his own MPs.On Monday Sunak met groups of Tory MPs to urge them to back a deal that he believes will restore the power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland and transform UK-EU relations.Diplomats in London and Brussels hope the deal can be sealed this week, marking a reconciliation of European powers ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.But one senior Eurosceptic Tory MP said after meeting Sunak that “a lot more negotiation is needed” to come up with a deal that would satisfy Brexiters at Westminster and the DUP.“The idea that a deal could be done this week is grossly overstated,” the MP said. “It’s clear that we are still a considerable way from an agreement.”

Sunak’s allies still hold out hope of a deal on Wednesday, sealed by a meeting between the UK prime minister and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, but they admit that timetable could easily slip.On Monday Suella Braverman, home secretary, defended UK legislation that would unilaterally scrap the protocol, part of the Brexit treaty signed by Boris Johnson in 2019.She argued that proceeding with the Northern Ireland protocol bill would keep up pressure on Brussels to strike a deal, adding that it was “one of the biggest tools that we have” in solving the dispute.Her comments echoed those of Johnson, who also wants to proceed with the legislation — currently on hold in the House of Lords. EU officials have described the bill as “a loaded gun on the table”.Meanwhile, Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s chief whip at Westminster, told the BBC that there should be “no role for EU law in Northern Ireland”, and therefore no role for the judges of the European Court of Justice.Downing Street said Sunak would drop the Northern Ireland protocol bill if a deal was reached with Brussels that met all of its objectives.On Monday James Cleverly, foreign secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, Northern Ireland secretary, held further talks on the deal with Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice-president.“We are focused on finding a durable solution for NI,” Cleverly wrote on Twitter. Šefčovič said in a tweet: “Our priority is to succeed for the benefit of all communities. Hard work continues. We’ve agreed to meet later this week.”Sunak’s allies believe the deal taking shape will meet the seven tests for reforming the protocol set out by the DUP and hope that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, its leader, can sell it to his party.One Eurosceptic Tory MP said that DUP acceptance of the deal was paramount. “We as a party mustn’t set a higher bar than the unionists,” he said. “If the DUP is prepared to compromise that’s good enough. There is always a risk of zealots in the Tory party that want to go further than unionists.”Micheál Martin, Ireland’s foreign minister, said: “I think what’s very important is that everybody now from here on think about the people of Northern Ireland.”Sir David Lidington, former de facto UK deputy prime minister, told the BBC that Sunak should push through a deal even in the face of opposition from some in his own party.“He should be bold, if he thinks the deal is in the national interest then he should make his case accordingly,” he said. More

Junior doctors in England have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strikes, in a further escalation of the dispute between the UK government and NHS staff over pay and working conditions. The British Medical Association on Monday said that, on a turnout of 77.49 per cent, 98 per cent of members had backed plans for a 72-hour walkout, the highest ever number. Some 97 per cent of junior doctors affiliated with the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association also voted to strike on March 15. The results of the two ballots came as more than 11,000 ambulance workers, paramedics and call handlers represented by the GMB and Unite unions walked out across England and Wales amid calls for pay deals linked to inflation, which stands at 10.1 per cent. And police chiefs across England and Wales warned ministers in a rare joint statement of the dire impact of real-terms pay cuts on forces. The strikes by junior doctors will mark only the second walkout by that section of the NHS workforce in its 74-year history. The BMA, whose members are expected to strike in March, said its aim was in part to secure “full pay restoration” because junior doctors had “experienced a 26 per cent real-terms pay cut since 2008”. Health secretary Steve Barclay described the BMA and HCSA’s announcements as “deeply disappointing”, saying the government valued the work of junior doctors and wanted to continue to address wider concerns around workload and pay. “As part of a multiyear deal we agreed with the BMA, junior doctors’ pay has increased by a cumulative 8.2 per cent since 2019-20,” he said. “We also introduced a higher pay band for the most experienced staff and increased rates for night shifts.”But Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors’ committee, said “the government has only itself to blame” for “standing by in silent indifference”. “We have voted in our thousands to say, ‘in the name of our profession, our patients, and our NHS, doctors won’t take it anymore’.”Calling on the government to view the ballot outcomes as a “wake-up call”, HCSA President Dr Naru Narayanan said there was “huge anger” among junior doctors over understaffing and low pay. Saffron Cordery, deputy head of NHS Providers, which represents health groups across England, warned that sector leaders were “deeply concerned” about the impact of further strikes on patient care.“Nobody wants this, but burnt-out frontline staff feel they’ve been pushed to this point,” she said, adding that it was still “in the government’s gift to bring this spiralling disruption to an immediate end by talking to the unions about pay for this financial year”.Meanwhile, the National Police Chiefs Council, the Police Superintendents Association and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners warned that real-terms cuts to police pay were undermining the impact of a continuing recruitment drive amid collapsing morale and high staff turnover. The police, like the armed forces, are legally forbidden from taking strike action. Releasing the results of a survey of members, PSA President Paul Fotheringham said his association had “serious concerns about the future of UK policing.”“If we look at the situation facing police officers — a 17 per cent pay cut since 2010, no fair process to decide their pay, no right to withhold labour and horrific stories of misconduct being shared — it is no surprise that our members are painting the worst picture of life as a police officer that we have recorded to date,” he said.In response, the Home Office said: “We recognise the increased pressures with cost of living, which is why we accepted the police remuneration review body’s recommendation to award a consolidated increase of £1,900 to all ranks of police officers.” More

“In the context of moderating inflation, there was no justification for today’s interest rate hike,” Foreign Minister Eli Cohen wrote on Twitter.In response, Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron suggested that Cohen look at current data – which show inflation continuing to rise – while respecting the central bank’s independence.Israel’s inflation rate hit a new 14-year high of 5.4% in January, prompting the central bank to raise interest rates by half a percentage point at a policy meeting on Monday to 4.25%, it’s eighth hike since last April.Cohen wrote that he had asked Israel’s finance minister to “formulate an outline” with Yaron to stop more interest rate hikes.Yaron later said: “It’s of course desirable, certainly as foreign minister, that he understands the importance of the central bank’s independence. In all countries where the central bank was harmed, we know what the final result was.”Deputy Bank of Israel Governor Andrew Abir told Reuters that more interest rate increases were likely, to battle “sticky” inflation and to show the bank’s determination to move the inflation rate back to a 1-3% target range. More

Barely four months into the role, Rishi Sunak faces a defining moment of his premiership. He appears close to an agreement with Brussels that would resolve the dispute over post-Brexit trading rules with Northern Ireland. Ending the animosity in UK-EU relations could bring real economic and political benefits. But opposition from Conservative and unionist hardliners makes this politically perilous for him. If a deal is in reach that addresses the practical problems being faced by the Northern Irish people, Sunak should be ready to face down Brexit purists and the Democratic Unionist Party.After Boris Johnson’s 2020 Brexit deal left Northern Ireland inside the EU single market for goods, checks were introduced on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, to avoid creating a land border with the south of the island. The result of the “Northern Ireland protocol” has been trade snarl-ups that unionists, those who wish the region to stay in the UK, feel have weakened ties with Britain.The new outline deal would create a “green lane” at Irish Sea ports, with minimal checks on goods whose final destination is Northern Ireland. A “red lane” would handle goods destined for Ireland and the EU market. Brussels appears to have compromised on implementation of the rules, showing readiness to reduce frictions in GB-Northern Ireland trade. But it has not ceded ground on constitutional points, including ensuring the European Court of Justice has the final say on single market issues — though there may be language playing down the court’s role.An agreement would have huge positives for Northern Ireland and the wider UK. Repairing trust with the EU could open the way to closer co-operation, from enabling the UK to join the Horizon scientific research programme, to deepening defence and energy links.If the European Reform Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs opposes Sunak’s deal, he should be ready to push through a vote with Labour support. All prime ministers are wary of relying on opposition votes but the political prize here is big enough to justify doing so. Nor should Sunak be swayed by pressure from Johnson not to ditch, as part of any new agreement, a bill that would allow ministers unilaterally to override the protocol.Downing Street must be ready to be robust, too, with the pro-UK DUP. The party has boycotted the Northern Ireland assembly since elections last May, blocking the formation of an executive, unless the protocol is dropped. Northern Ireland sorely needs a mechanism for taking decisions on issues from healthcare to the cost of living crisis.No one section of the community ought to be able to hold the rest hostage, be it nationalists who want the region to be part of Ireland, unionists, or the “neithers” in between. The DUP, though now the biggest unionist party, represents only a part of unionist opinion, and its extremist stance on the protocol was never deliverable. Many in the region see advantages in being inside both the UK and EU single markets, and would prefer to make the trading rules work. The DUP’s interests are better served by showing that Northern Ireland can continue to function well inside the UK.If the unionist party maintains its stance, Westminster needs to ensure proper government can be provided — even if it comes direct from London. In that situation, removing the DUP’s veto on allowing the Northern Ireland assembly to sit so it could have input into those decisions would be a bare minimum. Dublin should also be consulted on decisions. This solution is clumsy. But Northern Ireland’s future, and the UK’s ties with the EU, cannot be kept in limbo by the demands of a party whose stance threatens to undermine the very cause it claims to represent. More

When I got married, I was given an heirloom: a silver tea set from the family farm in South Africa. The teapot is a bad pourer but a good metaphor. Even though apartheid came to an end in 1994, and formal slavery in South Africa ended more than a hundred years before that, I still benefit from being descended from people who were able to acquire assets, capital and wealth while others were prohibited from doing so. That is, essentially, the unanswerable moral argument for reparations: that while, at an individual level, some people will be able to catch up unaided, on average, the family with the silver tea set is going to be richer and more successful than the family that mined the silver. No amount of hard work or good luck is going to close the gap — only some form of redistributive action is going to cut it. And, of course, that’s largely true. If you had to bet on two families, and had a choice between one that had been enslaved and unable to buy or acquire assets or property, and one that hadn’t, you would bet on the second family every time. Over time, you are much better off backing the family with wealth and assets than the one without. I can engage in all sorts of sophistry about how it’s not really my fault that my ancestors got up to all sorts of awful things, and how if the boot had been on the other foot I might have been descended from the people who mined the silver rather than the ones who drank the tea. But that doesn’t change the fact that I still benefit from the awful things my ancestors did, while others are held back by them. Another family feeling the benefit, to a much larger degree, are the Trevelyans. This family of British aristocrats have agreed to pay £100,000 in reparations to the Caribbean island state of Grenada, where the family owned several plantations. When slavery was abolished in 1836, the family was given £26,898 (a considerable sum at the time) in compensation by the British government. The logic of the Trevelyans’ position is hard to argue with. And there is no reason why they shouldn’t direct their philanthropic efforts as they choose. For an individual trying to work out what to do with an uneasy inheritance, the logic of reparations may be a useful one. It is less useful for states, however. One trivial reason for that is that talking about reparations tends to annoy people. Redistributing money to the poor, whether through state action or philanthropy, is not necessarily popular either, but reparations are even more unpopular. While a majority of Americans believe slavery affects the position of black Americans in the present, according to a 2021 study, just 18 per cent of white Americans support reparations. I suspect that this is because many recoil from the idea that they should pay for the crimes of their ancestors. A more important reason is that the argument for reparations often overlooks the most important thing about people (and states) without capital or assets: which is that they start at a relative disadvantage to people and states who do have those things. The most important quality of the poor is that they’re poor. That they are poor because their grandmother was enslaved or because their grandfather was a disreputable drunk is neither here nor there. The other problem is that arguments about reparations inevitably become about who should pay, rather than about who needs money. Politics becomes a debate about the moral status of creditors and debtors, rather than about what policies do or do not work. While no one would call them “reparations”, in practice the EU’s structural funds have helped to do the heavy lifting of reparations to countries within the bloc. They have enabled central and eastern Europe to recover from the consequences of living under Soviet rule, and helped Ireland recover from the impact of centuries of British rule. But over the course of its membership of the EU, the United Kingdom has made a relatively trivial contribution to Ireland’s economic development compared to its long-term negative impact on Ireland’s prosperity, and a large one to central and eastern Europe compared to the scale of the UK impact on the countries of the former USSR. And if Ukraine is one day a member of the EU, net contributors to the bloc’s budget are likely to be paying to repair damage inflicted on the country by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. What talk of reparations often does is confuse a “nice-to-have” aim — which is that, ideally, those paying to fix the mistakes of the past will be the ones who have directly inflicted the damage or benefited from those mistakes — with an urgent one: that those mistakes actually be fixed. [email protected] More

Consumer confidence in the eurozone improved for the fifth consecutive month, reflecting optimism that the bloc’s economy could suffer at worst only a mild recession despite the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war.The European Commission said the flash estimate of its consumer confidence indicator for February, based on a survey of about 32,000 people across the region, was up 1.7 points to minus 19. That was its highest level for a year, though it remained below pre-coronavirus pandemic levels and the long-term average and economists warned that the bloc’s economy still faces multiple challenges.Sentiment among European consumers has been buoyed by the relatively mild winter, which helped to reduce energy consumption, boosted gas storage levels and allayed fears of potential shortages. European wholesale gas prices have fallen to their lowest level since before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago, increasing hopes that eurozone inflation will continue to fall after hitting a record high above 10 per cent in October.Governments have also provided large subsidies to support jobs and limit the hit to disposable incomes from high energy prices, while wage growth in much of Europe has more than doubled to almost 5 per cent in the past year.“A key support to consumer sentiment in 2022 was the strength of the labour market, and our sentiment indicators suggest this is set to continue at least in the short term,” said Innes McFee, an economist at research group Oxford Economics. Eurozone unemployment fell to a record low of 6.6 per cent in December. However, within this, McFee said there were signs of job markets in Germany and Italy “softening quickly” due to the impact of the energy crisis, though France, Spain and the Netherlands were still “broadly stable”.Although the European economy has proved more resilient than expected to the inflationary pressures caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there are other signs of deteriorating conditions in the 20-member currency bloc. The number of bankruptcy filings by EU businesses rose sharply in the fourth quarter to their highest level since records began in 2015, lifted by a flurry of new cases in Spain.Building activity appears to have been an early victim of rising financing costs and falling house prices, as revealed by official EU data published on Monday, which showed production in the eurozone construction sector fell 2.5 per cent from November to December, taking it back below pre-pandemic monthly levels.George Buckley, an economist in London at Japanese bank Nomura, said consumer and business surveys had “overstated the negative growth outlook” this winter, with the eurozone economy defying recession fears by growing 0.1 per cent in the fourth quarter.“The question now, however, is whether [the surveys] are overstating the near-term positive growth outlook,” he said, pointing out that the recent 3 percentage points of interest rate increases by the European Central Bank had created the toughest financing conditions for a decade.Nomura forecast higher borrowing costs would drag the eurozone economy into a recession later this year, although it would be relatively short and mild — lasting three quarters and dragging output down 0.7 per cent from peak to trough. More

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Finance Minister Christian Lindner considers the budget demands made by his government coalition partners to be excessive and “simply unrealistic”, he told Reuters in a TV interview on Monday.”Their wishes are disconnected from the economic fundamentals,” Lindner told Reuters in response to a question on budget negotiations between his own business-friendly FDP, the centre-left SPD and the Greens.Lindner said the requested additional spending amounted to about 70 billion euros ($70.78 billion) compared with earlier plans. According to the finance minister, the demands head into the range of 100 billion euros more per year for the years 2025 and onward.”It has nothing to do with reality,” Lindner said, adding that these demands could not even be financed with tax increases.Lindner strongly opposes any such move, in contrast to the other two coalition partners.The new Defence Minister Boris Pistorius wants 10 additional billion euros for the defence budget next year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Lindner said he was in favour of increasing defence spending, without giving specific numbers. “However, what is clear is that 10 billion euros more in 2024 than now is an unrealistic figure,” he said. Lindner said that for this additional funding to be possible, defence spending would have to be considered a priority and then there would be less money available for other sectors. Municipalities are also requesting additional funding of several billions to take care of the Ukrainian refugees. Lindner said the federal government is already taking care of several hundred thousand people. “Therefore, I would say that the German government has already more than showed its commitment,” he said. With rising interest rates to tame inflation, Germany now has to pay 40 billion euros in interest payments per year, according to Lindner. “We don’t have the money for future tasks because we have to pay the debts of the past,” Lindner said. “This policy must end.” More