DUP leader denies backtracking on Protocol threats

The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, has denied backtracking on his party’s warning that it will withdraw from the executive if its demands regarding the Northern Ireland Protocol are not met by Sunday 31 October.

Sir Jeffrey told the BBC on Friday that his threat to withdraw from the region’s government depended on whether the UK government was “taking decisive action” which he said he thinks they now are.

Talks between Brexit Minister Lord Frost and Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission Vice-President yesterday failed to produce any new agreement.

Lord Frost said earlier this month that the European Union would be making a ‘historic misjudgement’ if it wasn’t prepared to make changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

He also reaffirmed his comments made to the House of Lords in September, in which he said that it would be a “significant mistake” to assume the UK would not trigger Article 16 – the part of the Northern Ireland Protocol which permits elements of the deal being temporarily suspended if they are evidenced to be causing “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade.”

The UK’s proposed changes to the deal include changing the legal basis of the Protocol to that of a Treaty governed by international law, not EU law policed by the European Court of Justice. The current Protocol, he said, meant the EU could “make laws which apply in Northern Ireland without any kind of democratic scrutiny or discussion.”

The Protocol was implemented to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the wake of Brexit by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods.