Liz Truss May Trigger Article 16 to Tear Up Northern Ireland Protocol if She Becomes PM

The Northern Ireland Protocol – a set of post-Brexit trade arrangements - has long been a stumbling block in relations between the UK and the EU. In May, London warned Brussels that if the bloc did not show the required flexibility to resolve the situation around the Protocol, the British government “would have no choice but to act.”

UK Foreign Secretary and Tory leadership frontrunner Liz Truss may tear up the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) by triggering the document’s Article 16 within days if she succeeds outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson next month, according to The Financial Times (FT).

Article 16 allows either party to undertake unilateral safeguarding measures if the protocol leads to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade.”

The FT cited unnamed sources as saying that officials close to Truss – the Tory leadership race frontrunner - has consulted legal and trade experts over Article 16 in recent weeks.

The sources told the newspaper that triggering Article 16 would “provide a stop-gap while a legislation to unilaterally rewrite the NIP passes through the Commons, which is not expected until the end of this year at the earliest.”

The legislation, also known as the NIP bill, was unveiled by No 10 in June, prodding the European Commission to relaunch legal proceedings against Britain for failing to properly implement Irish Sea border checks.

Although the insiders claimed Truss was not “pushing” to trigger Article 16, they argued that it remained an option on the table if she became prime minister.

“Some government officials have raised concerns about issues coming down the track and have presented many options to ministers to deal with them,” one of the sources said.

NIP Bill Doesn't Damage EU, Truss Claims

The remarks come after Truss insisted in June that the NIP bill revising the Protocol would not harm the EU, claiming that “there simply is no reason […] for the EU to take any action, [because] this legislation does not make them any worse off at all.”

This was preceded by No 10 stressing that the bill will allow the government “to address the practical problems the Protocol has created in Northern Ireland in four key areas: burdensome customs processes, inflexible regulation, tax and spend discrepancies and democratic governance issues.”

The government asserted that these problems had undermined the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement on the Northern Ireland peace, also prompting the "collapse" of power sharing agreements in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The NIP bill stipulates that a check-free “green lane” would be set up for goods destined for Northern Ireland, while trucks taking goods through the region across the open border into the Republic of Ireland — and thus the EU single market — would face “red channel” checks.

The bill also ends the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in enforcing the NIP, even though ministers could allow UK courts to refer matters of EU law to the ECJ. The document would also remove EU control over state aid and the value added tax in the region.

Part of the Brexit deal that went into force in January 2021, the NIP stipulates that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but under the document, all goods and animal-based products coming from the rest of British territory must be checked upon arrival to ensure their compatibility with EU sanitary regulations.

The UK government has repeatedly argued that the Protocol is not working, as it causes delays and interruptions to goods moving between the UK and Northern Ireland and irritates unionists, who believe their place within the country could be affected, thus threatening the Good Friday Agreement that in 1998 put an end to 30 years of armed conflict within Northern Ireland.

The situation around the NIP worsened in May after the Irish Republican political party Sinn Fein overran the unionist DUP party in the Northern Ireland Assembly election for the first time, prompting unionists to warn they will boycott the new government unless post-Brexit trade rules with the EU are addressed.