Northern Ireland Protocol: The Crux of the Crisis of Brexit

The Northern Ireland Protocol was designed by the EU as a solution to the challenges of Brexit on the island of Ireland; it had remarkably little input from either the UK government in London or the devolved Northern Ireland Executive, which had collapsed before the formal negotiations began. EU dominance of commerce, its far higher competence in the policy and legal areas at stake, its control of the exit process as well as its political unity made it by far the strongest party in the negotiations. This resulted in a very one-sided agreement in 2018 (partly revised in 2019) which was unable to work operationally and destabilized Northern Irelands politics and society. It was only when these problems became clear and the UK was able to communicate a better understanding of both Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement that the British state was able, in the Windsor Framework of 2023, to reverse some of the concessions that it had made in the early stages of the negotiations. Tags: Northern Ireland Protocol; Windsor Framework; Brexit; Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement; EU-UK relations; Safeguarding the Union; Northern Ireland; Withdrawal Agreement.