Britain and EU close in on crucial Brexit deal for Northern Ireland

LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will meet in the U.K. on Monday for final talks on a deal to resolve the Northern Ireland Protocol, a key sticking point in the post-Brexit trading arrangement.

In a joint statement Sunday, Sunak and von der Leyen said they had “agreed to continue their work in person towards shared, practical solutions for the range of complex challenges around the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.”

The U.K. may have left the European Union on Jan. 31, 2020, but the Northern Ireland Protocol has sparked persistent disagreement ever since. This part of the Brexit deal mandates checks on some goods that travel to Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. — with the new negotiations aimed at easing these rules.

Unionist parties in Northern Ireland — which is part of the U.K, unlike its neighbor Ireland, which is part of the EU — have argued that the checks place an effective border in the Irish Sea. The Protocol has also been criticized for jeopardizing the Good Friday Agreement — a long-standing peace deal that brought an end to three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

Sunak’s government has sought amendments to the deal signed by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has led calls from the hardline Eurosceptic wing within the ruling Conservative Party to rip up the deal he himself negotiated.

Breaking from predecessors Johnson and Liz Truss, Sunak has taken a less combative approach to engagement with the EU in the hope of reaching a resolution on key issues surrounding Northern Ireland by easing checks on goods travelling across the Irish Sea.

However, he will need to convince his own party to vote any prospective deal through parliament.

Meanwhile, the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly has been suspended since Feb. 2022 after the Democratic Unionist Party resigned in protest at the Northern Ireland Protocol. The loyalist party renewed warnings over the weekend that it would not be strong-armed into accepting a deal that did not meet its “red lines.”