Brexit May Tie Northern Ireland to EU Forever, Irish Judge Says
Brexit May Tie Northern Ireland to EU Forever, Irish Judge Says
(Bloomberg) -- U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal could permanently bind Northern Ireland to European Union law, according to an Irish judge at the bloc’s second-highest court, who suggested the accord may eventually bring the people of the island of Ireland together.
Johnson’s agreement -- still awaiting a sign-off from the U.K. Parliament -- would have “very long-term consequences for the continued separation of Northern Ireland from Ireland," Judge Anthony Collins told a Brussels event late Monday. He said that’s because EU law and practice would continue to be applied, which will aid the economic development of the region.
"The long-term consequences of all forms of economic integration are to bring people together," said Collins, who’s worked at the Luxembourg-based EU General Court since 2013. The proposed deal "is a significant expansion of the power of the EU law" introduced "into Northern Ireland in a permanent and irrevocable manner," he added.
The judge’s speech comes as Johnson is waiting to see whether he has any chance of getting his deal through Parliament and whether he can do so before his Oct. 31 deadline. Bound by law, Johnson was forced to write to the EU asking for an extension to that deadline after failing in his first attempt to get Parliament to endorse his exit deal on Saturday.
Ireland would be most affected by any no-deal scenario. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said last week that “the best thing that we can do in Ireland is not to intervene or interfere in U.K. internal politics," and that it is now with the House of Commons.
Under Johnson’s deal, Northern Ireland would stick to some of the EU’s -- and therefore the Irish Republic’s -- food standards and customs rules, meaning there would be checks on goods traveling from the rest of the U.K. to the province. The previous agreement, rejected by Parliament three times, saw Northern Ireland treated similarly to the whole U.K.: temporarily in the EU’s customs union.
‘Cart and Horse’
Judge Collins said Ireland’s recent economic success may prove attractive for unionists who in the early 1900s resisted "being attached to the cart and horse that was a very, very poor and backward agricultural economy in the south." Legal provisions mean that "to some extent Northern Ireland will participate in one way or another as part of the move towards greater integration in Europe."
Foreign investors may shy away from Northern Ireland if it retains the right to exit the arrangement created by the deal. The democratic consent measure "is a sort of loaded gun," he said, with the risk "that they might shoot your head off."
If this consent isn’t applied it would create a situation where the EU courts in Luxembourg “will have a say in the legal order of Northern Ireland going forward in eternity,” he said.
The previous accord was one “that Ireland could live very, very well with,” said Collins. But if this latest deal gets adopted “there are advantages in it which were not necessarily present in what was there before” and “on this basis we can continue to look forward with the peaceful and positive development of the island of Ireland in the context of the European Union.’’
--With assistance from Dara Doyle and Ian Wishart.
To contact the reporters on this story: Aoife White in Brussels at awhite62@bloomberg.net;Stephanie Bodoni in Brussels at sbodoni@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Stuart Biggs
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