slug.com slug.com

0 0

****In case anyone missed the article.

As AEP says:
The EU is a practised abuser of international law. It frequently finesses or ignores treaty obligations that conflict with its core interest. Pacta Sunt Servanda tweeted Ursula von der Leyen last week. Well, quite.
The Northern Ireland Protocol was agreed on the assumption that Brussels would agree to an off-the-shelf ‘Canada-Japan-Korea’ trade deal with no bells and whistles – as Mr Barnier himself had offered – and therefore that there would be no more than a light-touch trade border between Britain and Ulster. On that basis the Unionists said they could live with it.
But the EU has since moved the goalposts. The prospect of a no-deal rupture and intra-UK trade tariffs has constitutional implications for Northern Ireland, creating a much harder trade border in Irish Sea than the Unionists supposed. It therefore intrudes ineluctably on the Good Friday peace accord.
It is too glib by half to say that Boris Johnson signed up to the Agreement and therefore that it is his own fault.
It is equally glib to dismiss the invocation of the Good Friday accord as a canard. It takes some chutzpah to claim that a hard (electronic) tariff border on the island of Ireland is a grave threat to peace, but that a near identical tariff border down the Irish Sea is of no significance even though it severs constituent parts of the UK and covers ten times as much trade.
It beggars belief that Brandon Lewis should tell the world that the new legislation “does break international law in a very specific and limited way” when its deeper purpose is to prevent a breach of international law.
Had he framed the matter with more skill – and more accuracy – he might have spared some considerable damage to the reputation of this country.
Article 5 of the Protocol states that Northern Ireland is part of the UK customs territory and that there should be no tariffs on goods shipped across the Irish Sea from Britain unless they are re-exported to the Republic, a trivial amount that could be ring-fenced easily.
But the sub-clauses take away this protection, giving the EU extraordinary powers, should it wish to abuse them.
[telegraph.co.uk]
Let’s make it simple: WA clauses are contradictory and it needs to be torn up and as both sides have repeated, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

ieuan 7 Sep 20
Share

Be part of the movement!

Welcome to the community for those who value free speech, evidence and civil discourse.

Create your free account
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:133739