By: Martin Mederyd Hårdh/TT
Published: Just now
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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hopes Northern Ireland’s power-sharing apparatus will start working again. Archive image.
1 of 2Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP/TT
It’s time for Northern Ireland’s politicians to get back to work, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak believes, as the Good Friday Agreement celebrates 25 years.
His new compromise with the EU has prompted unionists to boycott the Northern Ireland parliament.
This Monday marks 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement, which ended the bloody conflict that had ravaged Northern Ireland for decades. Sunak is getting ready to receive international dignitaries – among them US President Joe Biden – on this occasion.
Biden’s visit shows that the agreement continues to have “tremendous international support from our closest allies”, according to Rishi Sunak.
“But above all it is based on compromise in Northern Ireland itself,” he announced in a written dispatch, according to British media.
Hot border issue
The great compromise has curbed most of the violence, but in the Stormont regional parliament in Belfast there is still a lot of friction. The Brexit process of recent years has been followed by a concern about what will happen when the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland also becomes a border between the UK and the EU.
After several attempts by his representatives, Rishi Sunak recently concluded a new agreement with the EU, called the Windsor framework. Unionists, who advocate a British Northern Ireland, believe, however, that this separates Northern Ireland from the rest of Great Britain to a great extent.
The major unionist party DUP has therefore boycotted all work in the Stormont regional parliament, which according to the Good Friday Agreement itself is based on the parties participating and compromising among themselves. Therefore, Northern Ireland has not been able to be properly governed.
Rishi Sunak visited Northern Ireland when the new deal was announced and said it gives Northern Ireland an “unimaginable” and privileged opportunity, as the country (unlike England, Scotland and Wales) gets to keep one foot in the EU’s single market .
No forecasts
Now the regional board must resume work, announces the British Prime Minister.
“We stand ready to work together with our partners in the Irish Government and local parties to ensure that the institutions are back up and running as soon as possible,” his statement read.
Joe Biden arrives in Belfast on Tuesday. Ahead of the visit, the Irish-born president has hailed the new Windsor framework as a crucial step for Northern Ireland’s future.
Britain’s Northern Ireland Minister Chris Heaton-Harris was not quite so optimistic, however, when he was asked on BBC Radio when the Northern Ireland parliament can start working again.
– Anyone who can predict a date when Northern Ireland is back in power could be a person who could sell you a four-leaf clover. No one knows when it will be back, he said then.
Facts
The Windsor framework
The British government and the European Commission agreed at the end of February on what is known as the “Windsor framework”, to resolve the dispute over the trade rules surrounding Northern Ireland after Brexit, which has caused irritation above all in Great Britain.
The framework means, among other things, that goods arriving in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK must be divided into two tracks – one green and one red – depending on whether they are intended to stay in Northern Ireland or go on to Ireland. In this way, the control of goods that must remain in the country should be minimised.
Since the EU countries have now given the thumbs up for their view on the framework, it will be taken up at the end of March in the joint committee with representatives of the EU and Great Britain that handles Brexit issues. If everything goes through, the necessary changes in law and regulations that are then required must be dealt with in the usual way by the EU’s Council of Ministers and the EU Parliament.
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