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Northern Ireland’s Peacemaker Blair Offers Way Out of Protocol Logjam

Northern Ireland’s Peacemaker Blair Offers Way Out of Protocol Logjam

Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister and an architect of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday agreement, said he plans to propose a solution to the logjam that threatens the fragile peace in the region.

The U.K. has threatened to suspend parts of the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, a core element in its agreement to split from the European Union, arguing that its implementation is causing significant harm to businesses and communities in the north. Yet doing so carries the risk of severe retaliation from the EU.

“They signed it and now they want out of it,” Blair said the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore on Thursday. “Now, I think there are ways through it. My institute will publish a paper in the next couple of days, setting out a series of practical steps that we believe could resolve this issue.”

Northern Ireland’s Peacemaker Blair Offers Way Out of Protocol Logjam

The standoff between the U.K. and the European Union has flamed concerns about a return to violence because of its potential to increase friction at the border between the republic in the south and the area rule by Britain the north.

“It’s always been a principle of the Good Friday Agreement my government negotiated that you keep that border open and it’s very important for peace that you do,” Blair told Bloomberg Television. “It’s a big problem and the U.K. government has got to be very, very careful on how it handles it.”

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