Another meeting between Maroš Šefčovič, EU Vice President and Michael Gove took place yesterday to try and resolve some of the still outstanding NI protocol issues. It is Gove's last meeting as co-chair of the Joint Committee before Lord Frost takes over. By all accounts it didn't achieve much. Gove wrote a letter to Šefčovič on February 3rd demanding various things be done "this week" and asking for a two year extension to the grace period.
Here we are three weeks on and he has nothing. And in return we have agreed to an extension of the period when the TCA applies provisionally until April 30th to allow the EU parliament to scrutinise the detail - in other words we made a concession and gained nothing, although it's hard to see how we could have refused. Johnson might think he can force the Commission and the EU parliament to dance to his tune but the European Parliament who requested the delay is another matter.
A few hundred independent minded MEPs were not likely to worry about blocking the TCA if they thought it would help them with their own constituents. You can see how the power dynamics are likely to work in future and how a democracy like the EU actually works.
It's rather weird that the UK parliament agreed to ratify it without proper scrutiny and it is only being provisionally applied at the moment. They presumably could also have spent four months on it but clearly aren't bothered.
Daniel (Lord) Moylan, a swivel eyed Brexiteer if ever there was one, tweeted about Šefčovič's press briefing afterwards which was the usual bland stuff revealing little:
This “open to” rubbish is just the EU trying to run from its governance responsibilities to the people of its new foreign colony.
Hard news: you make laws (undemocratically) in NI, you take responsibility for the economic and societal disruption they cause. https://t.co/Yajm95y9L6— Lord Moylan (@danielmgmoylan) February 23, 2021
For more information about what went on during the 90 minute meeting I read this thread from Tony Connelly:
Here's a more detailed breakdown on this evening's Joint Committee mtg between @michaelgove and @MarosSefcovic and their teams (@DUPleader and @moneillsf joined the meeting and made interventions)
— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) February 24, 2021
The meeting is said to have been "heavy" which I assume means with detail. Much of it appears to have focused on the European Commission's view that the UK is not implementing the flexibilities and obligations from last December's Gove-Šefčovič side agreement.
We are continuing to press for extensions to two grace periods from that Dec deal, one 3 month period (absolving GB-NI agri-food suppliers from expensive export health certificates) and one 6 month period, suspending the ban on sausages, non-frozen mince etc.
Gove wants the EU to consider a plan that would see supermarkets/retailers improve their own surveillance and traceability systems to such a refined degree that these systems would essentially replace EU traceability requirements and in doing so, remove the need for export health certificates.
The EU sources were sceptical and refused to give any undertaking until they see exactly what the UK has in mind and understand how it would work. An extension per se has not been ruled out but neither the Commission nor member states will agree to anything until the UK gives a strong commitment to implement the flexibilities and requirements from the December deal.
In other words we are back to where we were three weeks ago.
In particular, Connelly reports that the trusted trader scheme which facilitated the grace periods for supermarkets was meant to be extended to a "restricted" number of large and trusted suppliers to NI supermarkets. However, they say that when the UK first provided the list of large, trusted suppliers, which meet a range of trusted criteria, it ran to almost 2,000 firms, "That's not particularly restricted," says the EU.
Connelly's source said, "We're ready to look into what is needed beyond [the grace periods] but in order to do this we absolutely need to see that the flexibilities we already, with a lot of difficulty, managed to agree in Dec are being used, + to have a strong + credible commitment to that"
Among other EU complaints was the fact the UK is still not labelling all packaging showing that food should not be sold outside NI. Documentary checks are not happening, there's no channelling procedure, no UK designed export health certificates have been received.
All these points were made by Šefčovič to EU European affairs ministers at the General Affairs Council on Tuesday.
Apparently, Arlene Foster was at the meeting and is understood to have made a number of robust interventions, raising again the issue of Article 16, and insisting that the checks carried out at NI ports so far had meant that nothing "at risk" had crossed the border into the South.
The NI protocol is a big bone of contention with the Johnson, who hailed it as a triumph at the time, now coming under considerable pressure to scrap it. Leave.eu are still campaigning on social media:
The campaign against the hated Northern Ireland Protocol grows stronger by the day, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Lord Trimble now getting stuck in. Boris needs to LEAD on this issue - slap down bullying Brussels bureaucrats, scrap the Protocol, and protect the United Kingdom!
— Leave.EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) February 24, 2021
Lord Trimble is backing the "mutual enforcement" system and there will a new report out today by supporters of mutual enforcement to try and convince to EU and the UK government that it represents a viable alternative. I don't believe they will succeed. But you can bet they will be pushing hard. If they did succeed, one can imagine in a few years time an outcry against that system and some other pro-Brexit outfit setting out another hare-brained scheme to replace the single market and the customs union that doesn't involve the spilling of a drop of sovereignty.
The NI protocol and the sea border are here to stay and so is the potential for argument, rancour, bitterness and violence. At least until we rejoin the SM and the CU.
