Brussels, Oct 12 (BUS): It was late on Christmas Eve last year when the European Union and Britain finally reached a Brexit trade deal after years of wrangling, threats and missed deadlines to finalize their divorce.
There was hope that the now separated Britain and the 27-nation bloc in their relationship would sail toward calmer waters.
Such was the spoiled and yellow blood of diplomatic brinkmanship and bitter divorce that, two months after another birthday, the insults of treachery and duplicity are back again, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
“It has been written in the stars from the beginning,” said Professor Hendrik Voss of the University of Ghent. “There were a lot of loose parties. Many issues that would always lead to problems, such as fisheries and trade in Northern Ireland.”
It was the delicate but symbolically charged economic topic of the fish that held up a trade deal until the last minute. And hunting also provides a wedge of splitting now.
This week, France was rallying its EU partners for a common position and action if necessary if London did not give more licenses to small French fishing boats to roam near the British crown dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey that hug the French coast of Normandy.
In the French Parliament last week, Prime Minister Jean Castex accused Britain of reneging on its promise to hunt.
“We see in the clearest way possible that Great Britain does not respect its signature,” he said, adding that “all we want is respect for a certain word.”
In a relationship in which the two often fall back on clichés about the other, Castex was reminiscing about the centuries-old French humiliation of “the treacherous Albion,” a nation that can never be trusted.
Europe Minister Clement Boone added to this late on Monday. The European Union is scrupulously implementing the agreement it reached with the United Kingdom. We expect the same from Britain.”
Across the English Channel, Brexit supporters in British politics and the media often portray a complicit EU, deeply pained by the UK’s decision to leave, doing its best to make Brexit less than successful by throwing up bureaucratic hurdles.
The split crystallized in the deteriorating fighting over Northern Ireland, the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with an EU country. Under the most sensitive and controversial part of the Brexit deal, Northern Ireland remains within the EU’s single market for trade in goods, in order to avoid a difficult border with EU member Ireland.
This means that customs and border checks must be carried out on some goods bound for Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, despite the fact that they are part of the same country.
The regulations aim to prevent goods from Britain from entering the EU’s duty-free single market while maintaining open borders on the island of Ireland – a key pillar of the Northern Ireland peace process.
The UK government soon complained that the arrangements were not working. She said the rules and restrictions impose a stressful routine on businesses. Not without the metaphor of war, 2021 has already brought about the ‘Sausage War’, with Britain asking the European Union to repeal a ban on British processed meat products such as sausages entering Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, the British Unionist Society of Northern Ireland says the Brexit deal undermines the peace process by weakening Northern Ireland’s relations with the rest of the United Kingdom.
Britain accuses the EU of being unnecessarily “pure” in implementing the agreement, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, and says it requires major changes to operate.
The bloc agreed to consider the changes and is due to present its proposals on Wednesday. Prior to this move, Britain raised the stakes again, and demanded more sweeping changes to the jointly negotiated deal.
In a speech in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, on Tuesday, Brexit Secretary David Frost will say the EU should also remove the European Court of Justice as the final arbiter in trade-related disputes in Northern Ireland.
This is a requirement that the European Union is unlikely to agree to. The bloc’s highest court is seen as the pinnacle of the single market for free trade, and Brussels has vowed not to undermine its own regime.
“No one should have the slightest doubt about the gravity of the situation,” Frost will say in Lisbon, urging the EU to “demonstrate ambition and a willingness to address the core issues at the core of the Protocol.”
Frost plans to say that if there is no solution soon, the UK will invoke a clause allowing either side to suspend the agreement in exceptional circumstances.
This would send already strained relations into a deep freeze and could lead to a trade war between Britain and the bloc – a war that would hurt the UK’s economy more than its much larger neighbour.
Some EU watchers say Britain’s demand to remove court oversight shows it is not serious about making the Brexit deal work.
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney accused Britain of “changing the playing field” and rejected EU proposals without seeing them.
“This is seen across the EU as the same pattern over and over – the EU tries to solve problems, while the UK rejects solutions before they are published and asks for more,” Coveney said.
RAE