One year on from the DUP deal to restore Stormont - critics claim vindication amid concern about '300 EU laws per year'


In March – new rules on parcels will require customs declarations on parcels moving from businesses in Great Britain to Northern Ireland. That’s on top of rules introduced before Christmas which put trade barriers on everything from wool to digital downloads.
Far from the Irish Sea border being removed, it is getting harder – a logical outworking of the of the UK being split into two regulatory zones.
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Hide AdIt’s unclear precisely how many new EU laws are coming into force each year which are further cementing the border – but one estimate by the TUV puts the figure at 300 per annum.
It’s all a far cry from Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s claim that the Safeguarding the Union deal would deliver “zero checks, zero paperwork” – and remove the green lane, ensuring “that goods flowing within the UK flow freely”.
Under Gavin Robinson, the DUP now accepts that the Irish Sea border remains. Its official policy now goes much further than it did previously, seeking an end to the EU laws which underpin the arrangements.
At the weekend, DUP MLA Phillip Brett told the News Letter that Safeguarding the Union “did not secure all of our negotiating objectives and did not remedy a number of long-term problems born out of the Protocol. However, it did secure important gains which were worthy of banking.
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Hide Ad“We will continue to fight to fully restore Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom, including removing the application of EU law in our country and the internal Irish Sea Border it creates”.
But its critics – particularly in the TUV – say that the return of the Stormont institutions were predicated on a lie.
Dan Boucher, who quit as the DUP’s director of policy in the aftermath of the deal and joined Jim Allister’s party, estimates there could be around 300 new EU laws applying to Northern Ireland each year. He also points to the fact that only two of those laws have been subject to the “safeguards” introduced under the Windsor Framework.
“One of the really striking things about the suggestion that the Brake and Applicability Motion mechanisms fix the democratic deficit is that in the space of twelve months the Assembly has only tried to pull the Brake once and only denied an Applicability Motion once” Mr Boucher said.
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Hide Ad“For context, on 22 March 2023, after two years of Northern Ireland being subject to EU laws, the chair of the European Scrutiny Committee told Parliament that since 1 January 2021, 640 new EU laws had been imposed on Northern Ireland.
“That works out at around 300 new laws per year. If we make the assumption that around 300 new laws are imposed per annum, as in 2021 and 2022, then what we are being told is that the democratic deficit has been fixed because while 299 laws were imposed in the last twelve months, there is no democratic deficit because the Northern Ireland Assembly gave effect to our negative blocking citizenship in relation to just two of those laws and while it was overruled on one of those two occasions, it has not been overruled in relation to the other”.
While the Stormont Brake was rejected last month, the government has never made a decision on an applicability motion triggered by unionists in the Assembly early last year. As things stand, that leaves that particular EU blocked – but the government could yet decide to overrule that.
Another arch critic of the DUP’s Safeguarding the Union deal, loyalist activist Jamie Bryson, points to a recently published government fact sheet on business to business parcels under the ‘green lane’ or UK Internal Market System – trade movements which will require customs declarations.
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Hide Ad“One need not even read beyond the first paragraph of section 1 to see how demonstrably false another DUP claim has been shown to be. All goods going from business to business must provide customs declarations- this to be clear specifically includes goods staying within the UK.
“It is evident therefore that the claims of ‘zero customs paperwork’ was yet another lie to the unionist community shamelessly spread by the DUP.
“There’s no wheels left on the Surrendering the Union bus at this stage, but yet the DUP still shamelessly sit in Stormont as chief implementers of the very same Irish Sea border they once pledged ‘unalterable opposition’ to”.
He said that one year on, “those of us who called out that deceitful deal have been vindicated, and then some”.
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