European Union lawyers claim in a leaked document that the United Kingdom has already violated the divorce agreement. That means sanctions could follow. The European Commission and the UK held an emergency meeting on Thursday.
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The point of contention revolves around a bill that the British government published on Wednesday, the ‘internal market bill’. London recognizes that the draft deviates from Irish protocol. That protocol, one of the pillars of the separation agreement, is designed to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. But the Conservative government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to include a number of provisions on state aid and customs formalities in British law that deviate from the protocol.
According to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman, these are “limited and reasonable steps to clarify specific elements of the Northern Ireland Protocol and remove ambiguities.”
But the mere publication of the law is a violation of international law, according to the lawyers of the European Commission, according to a leaked document, reported by the British newspaper. The Guardian message. “By submitting the bill alone, the United Kingdom is in breach of the obligations in the divorce agreement (Article 5) because it jeopardizes the objectives of the agreement.”
The British government is also not going to repeal the bill, says British Minister Michael Gove after an emergency meeting with the European Commission. Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic does not rule out legal action.
The transition year in which negotiations on the future relationship between the UK and the EU must be concluded will end at the end of December. If no agreement is reached, the UK will disappear from the single market: a No Deal Brexit. Johnson announced this week that October 15 is the deadline for the negotiations.
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