This content was published on 04 February 2022 – 12:01
Dublin, Feb 4 (EFE).- The leader of the majority Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Jeffrey Donaldson, warned this Friday that he sees it “difficult” for his formation to return to the Northern Irish government shared with nationalists if the “problems” that is causing the Brexit Protocol in the British province.
Donaldson made these statements after his colleague Paul Givan presented his resignation as chief minister on Thursday, which has caused the fall of the Executive and has strained the negotiation between the EU and the United Kingdom on this issue.
“I have withdrawn the chief minister because the problems of the protocol are not being addressed, despite the commitment and promises made by the (British) prime minister, Boris Johnson),” the unionist leader told BBC Radio Ulster.
He warned that, due to “the instability generated by the protocol”, Brussels and London must find a solution before Northern Ireland holds regional elections on May 5, otherwise “it will be difficult for us to form a government “.
Givan’s resignation has also caused the automatic departure of the autonomous Executive of the main deputy minister, the leader of the nationalist Sinn Féin Michelle O’Neill, which plunges the province into a new institutional crisis.
Sinn Féin, against Brexit but in favor of the protocol, has said that the elections should be brought forward, in which it could become the largest political force for the first time in the history of the region, according to polls.
In fact, the other three parties that make up the Government also understand that the crisis created by the DUP responds to an electoral maneuver designed to whitewash its image for managing Brexit and hide the internal struggles that have worn it down in recent months.
The protocol, which entered into force on January 1, 2021 along with the rest of the Brexit agreements, requires the review of goods arriving in Northern Ireland from the British Isles to prevent the uncontrolled entry of products into the European community market.
However, the new bureaucracy has caused shortages of products and political tensions in the region, especially in the unionist-protestant community, which sees its position in the United Kingdom in danger, even more so when Brexit has promoted the historical objective of the nationalists to reunify the island of Ireland. EFE
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